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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24483403">Mourning Mother's Day</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/River9Noble/pseuds/River9Noble'>River9Noble</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Batcowverse [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Batfamily (DCU), F/M, Family Bonding, Grief/Mourning, I am sorry it just keeps growing, JaySteph - Freeform, Mother's Day, Romance, Steph's adoption aftermath that DC ignores, Tumblr: Jason Todd Rare Pair Challenge, Tumblr: fyeahjaysteph, dickbabs, lots of Timmy angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:41:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>30,687</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24483403</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/River9Noble/pseuds/River9Noble</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no Mother's Day like a Wayne Family Mother's Day. The dead moms. The shit moms. The baby mamas. </p><p>It's no wonder that Steph wants to get drunk off her ass and Jason wants to blow shit up. But JaySteph are a couple this year, and together they decide that maybe they're up to the challenge of making Mother's Day slightly more tolerable. </p><p>Will that involve the Batcows? Hell, yeah it will! </p><p>[Yeah, I know I said I wouldn’t update this until after Red Knight wrapped, but it’s been too long since I last updated and Red Knight’s going slow, so here we are! A new chapter for the new year!]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Barbara Gordon/Dick Grayson, Stephanie Brown/Jason Todd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Batcowverse [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725391</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>74</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>107</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Jason Todd Rare Pair Challenge</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Death Knell Tolls</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Welcome, BatFans! This story is the 4th installment in my Batcowverse AU. I wrote it for the May @fyeahjaysteph Tumblr prompt: Mothers.</p><p>It's not necessary to read the previous stories in this AU first, but you might enjoy this one more if you do. </p><p>Note that this is an AU that is similar to canon, but diverges in significant ways... basically, wherever canon was (coughs) bullshit and needed some correcting, in my opinion. The changes are revealed as the story progresses... but this is a friendly warning not to make assumptions about the way that backstories have gone down. Because most of them have been tweaked.</p><p>Basically, unless this fic explicitly mentions something happening, don’t assume it did.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jason was laying comfortably on their black leather couch, his head resting on Steph's lap and his nose buried deep in <em>Pride and Prejudice</em>, when Steph, who was playing on her phone while half-heartedly watching "Mythbusters" on the tv, let out a truly agonized groan.</p><p>"Babe?" Jason said, lifting his chin up to look into his girl's eyes, which were uncharacteristically troubled and angry.</p><p>"It's fucking Mother's Day on Sunday," Steph spat out in disgust.</p><p>"Oh, shit," Jason groaned almost as painfully as she had.</p><p>He slapped his book closed on his stomach.</p><p>"I knew there was a reason why I picked up <em>Pride and Prejudice,</em>" he mourned, tossing the offending paperback onto the coffee table without sitting up.</p><p>"My goddamn subconscious must have wanted me to wallow vicariously in the grips of a terrible mother this week," he sighed. "Couldn't just leave me the fuck alone, could you, brain?" he yelled in frustration, running his hands through his hair before raising his pained eyes back up to meet Steph's, which looked equally grim.</p><p>She set her phone down on the side table and made a sympathetic noise, cradling Jason's cheeks with her hands. He turned his head to kiss her palm, making her smile, before he relaxed into her touch, letting her massage his temples and stroke gentle circles into his clenching jaw muscles.</p><p>"What do you usually do for Mother's Day?" Jason asked Steph curiously as he nuzzled his cheek into her hand.</p><p>This was the first year that he and Steph had been together for the holiday, which, frankly, was the ultimate worst day of the year for him. Even worse than his deathversary, which was saying a lot.</p><p>Steph sighed.</p><p>"I drink early and often until I manage to pass out," she said glumly. "And avoid my mom at all costs. What do you do?"</p><p>"Blow shit up, shoot assholes, come home and drink 'til I throw up," Jason said placidly. "Then maybe if I'm lucky, I'll pass out."</p><p>Steph grunted.</p><p>"Want company?" she said despondently.</p><p>"Yours? Always," Jason smiled, pulling one of her hands down from his hair so he could kiss it again.</p><p>He managed to get a small smile out of Steph as he continued to play with her hand, kissing fingertips and knuckles as he brooded in solidarity with his equally traumatized and fucked up fiancée, thinking about their joint history of messed up mothers.</p><p>Steph, though, had an added layer of pain, Jason knew, because she <em>was </em>a mom. A mom who had given her baby up for a closed adoption at age fifteen. The emptiness in her life where that little heartbeat had once been still shredded Steph's soul to pieces on a daily basis, but no one except Jason was aware of that.</p><p>Most of the Batfamily acted like they'd forgotten that she'd even had a kid. And Steph's mom had pushed her multiple times to have an abortion back when she was pregnant. So Jason had no trouble understanding why Steph couldn't stand to be around Crystal on the day set aside to honor mothers, even leaving aside the fact that her mom had been a drug addict for so much of Steph's life.</p><p>It made him sad, though, to think of Steph going through Mother's Day drunk and depressed, mourning her baby and completely uncelebrated as a mom. It was one thing for Jason to drink the day away; he had two dead moms, one who'd been directly responsible for his death, and the other who'd loved him but been a heroin addict in the last years of her cancer-stricken life.</p><p>But Jason wasn't running from anything except his grief over his moms on Mother's Day. Steph, though…she was running from herself. And Jason would be damned if he sat by and let his girl suffer so badly now that she had him in her life.</p><p>What to do about it, though…</p><p>"I didn't always used to have such shitty Mother's Days," Jason said thoughtfully, surprising Steph out of her reverie.</p><p>"No?" she asked him. "Before your mom died, you mean?" she said.</p><p>"No," Jason said, squeezing her hand a little tighter.</p><p>"Well, I mean, yeah, those were better, of course," he said, amending his first statement, which had come out wrong.</p><p>"But Mother's Day was a big fucking deal in the Wayne family," Jason explained. "Bruce and Alfred made a whole day out of it… and it was kind of nice," he finished in a half-whisper, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed and shy to be reliving a rare happy childhood memory.</p><p>"Really, it was nice?" Steph said curiously. "I'd think with so many dead moms to go around it would have been a pretty awful day for all of you."</p><p>Her eyes were tender and her tone sympathetic as she rubbed Jason's head, enjoying the rare glimpse that he was giving her into his past with Bruce. Jason usually didn't like to talk about the times before he died.</p><p>Too many painful memories, he'd say, but Steph had long ago deduced that the problem wasn't that the memories from back then with Bruce were bad, but that they were good - and the relationship in the present between father and son wasn't, so much.</p><p>The contrast hurt too much, Steph understood, so Jason avoided dwelling on the happier times.</p><p>"Well, the day was sad," Jason said slowly. "But… that was kind of the point," he said.</p><p>"Bruce used to say that if we gave ourselves one day a year to cry and remember and grieve together as a family, the other 364 days would be easier. And maybe they were," Jason sighed, rubbing his forehead like he wished that the past had stayed buried in his grave where it couldn't rise up to trouble him.</p><p>"What did you all used to do for Mother's Day?" Steph said gently, lifting Jason's hand up to kiss it before lacing her fingers through his.</p><p>"We'd go to the cemetery in the morning," Jason said, looking up at Steph a little more peacefully as his fingers curled around hers.</p><p>"And we'd go around to everybody's mom's graves together to lay flowers, and we each had to come up with a question that everybody had to answer about their mom," he said, sitting up and beginning to get energized.</p><p>"What kind of questions?" Steph said with a smile as Jason scootched next to her on the couch before snuggling his arm around her and tucking her head into his shoulder.</p><p>"Questions like, what was the funniest thing your mom ever did?" Jason said, looking down into Steph's supportive eyes. "Or what was the angriest your mom ever got? Or the ugliest she ever looked?" he said, starting to chuckle.</p><p>"What?" Steph said, starting to laugh, too. "That's kind of awful," she giggled, but Jason smiled fondly, his eyes a little distant.</p><p>"Yeah, but the point was, we were remembering them like they really were," he said, sounding oddly at peace with the strange tradition. "And we were sharing that realness with people who didn't know them," Jason said.</p><p>His fingers stroked along Steph's shoulder.</p><p>"It made them feel more alive," he mumbled, and a little empathetic noise came out of Steph's mouth as she leaned in to hug Jason tight across his chest.</p><p>He gave a contented sigh and wrapped his arms around her tighter too, kissing into her hair for a few minutes before going on.</p><p>Finally, he cleared his throat and said, "After we spent time at each grave, we'd go home and we'd all cook brunch together, for once, instead of just Alfred making it. We each had to make something that our mom liked."</p><p>"That's … kind of awesome," Steph said slowly, seeing the way that Jason's face was starting to light up.</p><p>"Dick poured bowls of cereal for each of us one year," Jason snorted, "and Al was so mad at him. But Dick said it was the brand his mom liked so what could Al do?"</p><p>"He made firmer rules the next year, though," Jason laughed. "You had to use the stove or the oven. Unless it was a cold salad in which case it needed to be approved by him ahead of time so it wasn't just a bag of lettuce with some ranch dressing."</p><p>Steph smiled, feeling a flicker of warmth in her heart around the holiday for the first time in, maybe, ever. Growing up with the abusive Cluemaster as her father, coupled with her mother's addiction to pain pills, and Steph could never find a good reason to celebrate either of her parents on the day when corporate commercialism tried to force them upon her.</p><p>And then, after giving her baby away, Mother's Day had become sheer agony.</p><p>The only slightly tolerable years were the ones when Steph was trapped in Africa with Leslie, and only then because the teen hadn't realized that the American holiday was upon them until it was long past.</p><p>But Steph's time in Africa had other griefs associated with it - too many - that cancelled out the slight positive of missing Mother's Day for a few years.</p><p>"Do Bruce and Dick and Alfred still do all that, do you think?" Steph asked Jason. "We could go spend the day with them, if you wanted," she offered.</p><p>Jason looked at her.</p><p>"I don't know if they still do it," he admitted, and Steph's heart clenched.</p><p>How many years had Jason been back from the dead and he was still this far out of the Batfamily loop? Steph's anger and sadness for her fiancé mixed together into a boiling determination.</p><p>"We should find out," Steph said assertively. "And go celebrate with them. If you want to," she added more gently, her eyes searching out Jason's for his answer.</p><p>"How would that make you feel, though, babe?" Jason asked her with some concern. "It's still a bad day for you."</p><p>As they'd been talking and he'd been remembering past holidays, Jason was slowly coming up with some ideas about how he could make the day better for Steph. Not that he was going to spoil the surprise by telling her that, but if spending time with the Waynes would also help her feel better?</p><p>Then Jason was completely down for it. Plus… not that he wanted to come right out and say so, even to Steph, but… Jason found himself longing to recapture the healing quality of Bruce's Mother's Days of Mourning.</p><p>They had always been so special, and Jason had always felt so loved and supported by Bruce and Alfred and Dick. They had been a family, back then. God, how he missed that. Why had everything had to go to hell?</p><p>Steph chewed her lip.</p><p>"It would be a nice distraction for me to spend Mother's Day with your family," she said honestly.</p><p>"And if we're doing it for the purpose of acknowledging our grief," she continued, "that feels a lot better than being hit over the head all day with happy sappy Big Brother propaganda ranting at us about how great the damn day is and how lucky we all are to have such fantastic mothers."</p><p>"No shit," Jason smiled.</p><p>"Well," he said slowly, "I can call Dick and ask him what they're planning to do this year."</p><p>Steph nodded and as Jason cuddled her closer, she thought that this year was already shaping up to be better than the previous ones, because she and Jason were going to suffer through it together.</p><p>And since getting with Jason, Steph had already learned that life with him at her side was way less horrible than life had been before she'd started dating him. Which was one more thing that made her love him.</p>
<hr/><p>"Mother's Day?" Dick said when Jason called him later that evening.</p><p>"Oh, that's a loaded gun," Dick groaned, sounding like Titus the dog with the stomachache that he'd had the time that Damian had let him eat the days old hot dog from the side of the road that they'd found while out on a walk with Jason and Steph.</p><p>Which had produced the very unpleasant result of Damian moaning almost as much as poor Titus, albeit in guilt-ridden misery in Damian's case, when the boy had realized that what he'd thought was a treat had in fact made his dog sick.</p><p>Jason could still hear Damian's heart-wrenching wails when he closed his eyes.</p><p>
  <em>Titus is a grown dog, Todd! I did not believe that I had the right to impose restrictions on his diet!</em>
</p><p>Yeah, that had been a day.</p><p>Which Dick had conveniently been on duty for with his day job on the Bludhaven police force and like a true dick, had refused to leave his stakeout, despite Jason offering Red Hood and Batgirl as a replacement plus all of the criminals hand-delivered to the police station if only Dick would come deal with his crying son who wouldn't stop apologizing to Titus or begging Jason to cut his tongue out - Damian's, that was, not the dog's - because the tiny former assassin had decided that only a grotesque punishment would be a suitable atonement for his failures as a pet parent.</p><p>Not that Jason was still pissed at Dick about that or anything.</p><p>Or having flashbacks when he heard Dick's moaning here in the present with his reaction to the merest mention of Mother's Day.</p><p>Jason frowned curiously on his end of the phone.</p><p>"Why is Mother's Day so bad for you?" he asked. "Don't you all still do the cemetery and brunch like we used to?"</p><p>"Oh, Jason," Dick said, sounding completely startled. "We haven't done that since you died," his older brother said slowly.</p><p>Jason inhaled a sharp breath and was surprised to find tears hitting the back of his eyes.</p><p>"Why - why did you stop?" he said hoarsely, feeling shocked.</p><p>He could have seen the Batfamily falling out of the tradition during the years that they'd thought Bruce was dead, but… to have stopped it over Jason dying? So long ago? And never picking it back up?</p><p>Jason had to bite his lip to make sure that no emotional sounds slipped out unawares while Dick took his time answering him.</p><p>"I don't know why we stopped," Dick mumbled, sounding, though, like he did know.</p><p>"The first year you were gone, we didn't celebrate any holidays at all," Dick said morosely, and Jason did not like how learning that new piece of information made his throat close up even tighter, or how it allowed a few tears to threaten their way to the very edges of his eyes.</p><p>"And after that… I think… it was just too hard, given what Sheila did to you," Dick said, his voice starting to sound thicker and even more reluctant as he referenced Jason's birth mom who had conspired with the Joker to kill him.</p><p>"Oh," Jason said inadequately, feeling uncomfortably moved by that admission.</p><p>Especially given how often he was still on the outs with Bruce, who hadn't properly avenged his death, by Jason's standards, in that he'd refused to kill the Joker. Which wasn't still, to this day, a sore point between father and son, or half of the reason why Jason picked fights with Bruce, or anything like that.</p><p>Nope. Jason had completely moved on from that. Sure. It was peachy keen that Dick was reminding him of Sheila and Joker and daring to suggest that those two pieces of shit had affected Bruce's ability to function in any way.</p><p>How glad Jason was that he'd called Dick.</p><p>"Plus," Dick continued relentlessly, "Bruce and I were fighting a lot back then, and I think he'd only started doing all that stuff for Mother's Day in the first place after he took me in, because my mom had just died… and then of course we kept it going after you joined the family…" Dick's voice trailed off, sounding grief-stricken.</p><p>"Fuck," Jason said awkwardly, really starting to wish that he hadn't called and asked.</p><p>Except Steph had wanted him to call, so it was ok. The part of his brain that was quietly reminding Jason that he had wanted to call, too, could shut up any time now.</p><p>Jason sniffed and wiped his eyes with an angry thumb.</p><p>"What, um, what do you do now for Mother's Day?" he asked Dick, who sighed heavily.</p><p>"I've had Damian the last two years," he said, anger and grief and frustration really wracking his brother's voice now.</p><p>"How do you celebrate Mother's Day with a kid whose mom abused him into being an assassin?" Dick asked Jason helplessly.</p><p>"Especially after she'd gone and abandoned him to Bruce, who was a complete stranger to Damian, who then up and dies on top of it," Dick said.</p><p>"So we thought," he added in a mutter.</p><p>Jason gave a low whistle, thinking through the ramifications for his youngest brother that honestly, he hadn't previously considered. Because after they'd thought that Bruce had died, Jason had withdrawn from the family and lived in his own private bubble more than ever.</p><p>Dick had taken up the Batman mantle, and Jason was grateful that his big bro had taken that on, he was - but it hurt so much to see someone other than Bruce in the suit that Jason could hardly stand talking to Dick, since every conversation inevitably led to the topic of Batman.</p><p>And then there was Damian to avoid, who Dick and Babs had bravely adopted and started to parent. Which didn't make Jason feel like a guilty piece of shit at all, to have his failure to rescue little D from Talia inadvertently shoved in his face every time he tried to hang out with his older sibs.</p><p>Emerging from the Lazarus Pit after Talia had dunked Jason's zombie self in it had been worse than anyone except Ra's and Talia could possibly imagine, and father and daughter had gone swimming in the green waters so many times that they were beyond caring about how anyone else might be affected.</p><p>By anything.</p><p>Which was why Talia had been so chill about turning baby Damian into an assassin in the first place.</p><p>And it wasn't that Jason had been beyond empathy after being Lazarused only once, but he'd been so filled with rage and so fucked in the head from it that… ok yeah, he <em>had</em> been beyond caring about Damian at first.</p><p>Hell, he'd been beyond remembering that the kid even existed, since he'd been so overwhelmed with remembering who Jason Todd once was as all of his memories started flooding his brain as soon as he came up for air.</p><p>Not to mention, Jason had been quite busy freaking the fuck out on Talia and escaping her evil clutches before the Pit's goo had even had a chance to dry off of his skin.</p><p>He'd left the League of Assassins behind in the dust and not thought twice about poor Damian until Red Hood had realized who the tiny new Robin in Gotham actually was under that little green mask.</p><p>So, yeah. After Bruce had died, Jason had stayed the fuck away from Dick and Babs and Damian. He didn't need all of the grief and guilt that seeing them brought up.</p><p>Oh, Alfred had still checked up on Jason and forced him to eat a meal together with him once a week, but only with the two of them present. The rest of the time, Al had conceded to Jason's distressed emotional state and not pushed him to interact with the rest of the family except for Christmas and Thanksgiving, which the BatFamily would have had to pry out of Alfred's cold, dead hands.</p><p>But those Mother's Days when Bruce had been gone? Jason hadn't given Dick and Damian a second thought. He was too busy blowing shit up and getting drunk off his ass.</p><p>Dick was still talking, though, Jason abruptly realized.</p><p>"You know Babs' mom walked out on them when she was a kid," Dick was saying.</p><p>Something else that Jason had forgotten.</p><p>"It's a shit day all around," Dick said in resignation.</p><p>"Me and Babs took Damian out of town on a vacation both years when we were raising him," he said. "We all knew it was a distraction, but we kind of jointly decided fuck it, we needed it and Mother's Day be damned."</p><p>Jason was surprised to find that he had to wipe tears off of his cheeks, now, because Dickie generally did not curse a lot and it was hard to hear his usually stable, rock solid older brother be so shaken.</p><p>"What about this year?" Jason asked him, trying to surreptitiously clear his throat. "Now that Bruce is back?"</p><p>"I don't know," Dick mumbled, sounding ashamed and somewhat forlorn.</p><p>"It's been hard to figure out how to share parenting Damian with Bruce," he said.</p><p>"Until you and Steph made Bruce start sending Dami over on the weekends, me and Babs were hardly even still seeing him," he said, sounding like he was starting to cry, and damn it, that was making Jason's tears flow a little faster.</p><p>"I should have asked Bruce already about Mother's Day," Dick said, sighing, "or made plans by now with Damian. I'll get on that," he said, more to himself. "It's never too late to book a vacation when you're rich," he muttered.</p><p>"No," Jason said firmly, interrupting Dick's guilt trip.</p><p>"No?" Dick said in confusion.</p><p>"No," Jason said again. "Mother's Day sucks for Steph, too," he said. "You know she gave her baby up."</p><p>"Oh, yeah," Dick murmured, as if he had in fact completely forgotten.</p><p>"We need to start the Wayne version of Mother's Day back up again," Jason said decisively. "We all need it. And we all need each other. I'm pulling rank," he said.</p><p>"You're pulling rank…?" Dick said with some amusement, which sounded a hell of a lot better on him than his tears had.</p><p>"Yes," Jason said in a tone that didn't brook argument. "I died. The tradition stopped because of me. I get to bring it back."</p><p>There was a pause on the other end of the phone.</p><p>"No arguments from me," Dick said softly, sounding a little awe-struck.</p><p>"Babs has to come, too," Jason decreed. "And Damian. And even the little shit Replacement," he said.</p><p>"Jason," Dick said in a warning voice.</p><p>"You get to tell him," Jason said. "The less I have to talk to that fucker, the better."</p><p>"Ok," Dick said after a beat. "Are you going to be the one to tell Bruce?" he asked suspiciously.</p><p>"Yeah," Jason growled. "You'd better believe I'm going to tell him."</p><p>"Why does that sound like a threat?" Dick sighed.</p><p>"No idea, Dickiebird," Jason said cheerfully. "See you Sunday," he said. "Love you, bye."</p><p>"Love you," Dick said back before Jason hung up, staring at the phone in his hand, hardly believing the words that he had just heard come out of Jason's mouth.</p><p>He dialed Barbara's number.</p><p>"Babe?" he said when she picked up. "You're not going to believe this…"</p>
<hr/><p>"Jason," Bruce's voice said warmly when he picked up the phone. "Alfred said you wanted to talk to me?" he asked curiously.</p><p>"Yeah, Pops," Jason said. "I'm reinstituting the Wayne Family Mother's Day Tradition, so you need to be there and participate on Sunday."</p><p>"The tradition…?" Bruce said slowly, sounding a mite confused.</p><p>"You know," Jason said impatiently. "The cemetery. The questions. The brunch. The jigsaw puzzle. All of it."</p><p>"Jay," Bruce breathed out, his voice going soft and wondrous and broken all at once. "Lad," he murmured. "We - we haven't done that -"</p><p>"Since I died," Jason filled in for him. "I know. Dick told me. So I'm bringing it back. Will you come?"</p><p>He paused a beat.</p><p>"Scratch that. You have to come. Ok?" he tacked on with a hint of vulnerability, the little kid in him still wanting to hear Bruce agree to it.</p><p>"O-ok," Bruce said shakily. "Yes. Of course," he said a little more firmly. "Who all are you inviting?" he asked cautiously.</p><p>"The whole family," Jason said. "Babs and Damian and Steph and the shithead."</p><p>"Jason," Bruce said as if Jason was about to give him a headache.</p><p>"Fine, fine, the Replacement," Jason scoffed. "You know who I mean."</p><p>"It's not going to be much of a holiday if you two are fighting the whole time," Bruce said in his dad voice, although he didn't bother to correct Jason's still derisive nickname for Tim.</p><p>"I'm not going to fight with him," Jason sulked. "I said he could come, didn't I? And I told Dick he had to be the one to tell him about it so I didn't have to talk to him."</p><p>"Ok," Bruce said slowly. "Tim's lost his mom, too, you know."</p><p>"No shit," Jason said somewhat angrily. "I get it, Pops. I invited him, ok? We'll include him."</p><p>"Ok," Bruce said in a tone that said he didn't want to argue, but he was going to wait and see what happened.</p><p>"You'd better tell him, though, not to mess with Steph," Jason said with a warning of his own in his voice. "She doesn't need any of his shit on Mother's Day, of all days."</p><p>"I'll speak to him," Bruce said after a pause. "About the importance of all of us being patient with each other on such a difficult day," he said meaningfully.</p><p>"Fine. Yes," Jason grunted. "Oh, and everybody either has to make their mom's dish vegan or else cook an extra vegan dish that's similar to it for Damian, or else he won't have anything to eat."</p><p>There was an extended moment of silence on the other end of the phone.</p><p>"Geez, Pops," Jason groused. "It's not that hard. You just google vegan versions of whatever recipe it is and follow the directions."</p><p>"No, I get it," Bruce said quickly. "I wasn't upset," he said. "Just… surprised," he said, some pride slipping into his voice. "That's very thoughtful of you to think of your brother's diet," Bruce said.</p><p>"I think about it every time he comes over for dinner before patrolling with me and Steph," Jason pointed out. "And Dick and Babs think about it every weekend that he's over at their place. Alfred thinks about it every day. It's not that special to remember the kid's a vegan and make stuff he can eat," he said to his father in a somewhat scolding tone.</p><p>"No, I suppose it's not," Bruce murmured. "I just… it's nice to see that you care so much about him," Bruce said. "And about the whole family, Jay," he said, sounding a little choked up, which was the definite downside to planning Mother's Day for a family full of orphans, Jason thought to himself with some irritation.</p><p>He did not like being on the receiving end of so many tears.</p><p>Unless they were Steph's. She could cry on him all she wanted and Jason considered it a privilege to hug and comfort her. Plus, he might cry on her shoulder occasionally. Or semi-occasionally.</p><p>But the rest of the family? Ugh.</p><p>"Yeah, yeah," Jason mumbled. "I'll see you Sunday at the cemetery, Pops. Bring flowers."</p><p>"Right," Bruce said to him. "Of course. See you then, Jay. I love you," he added right before he hung up, not giving Jason a chance to say it back.</p><p>Because it wasn't like Jason was in the habit of saying it anymore to Bruce.</p>
<hr/><p>"I had another idea for Mother's Day," Steph told Jason a few days later, plopping down into his lap as he cleaned his guns before they went out on patrol.</p><p>"Oh, yeah?" Jason said with a smile. "What's that?" he asked, kissing Steph's neck and continuing to work with his arms around her now.</p><p>He quite liked Steph's ideas, as a general rule.</p><p>"Well, you and Dick pointed out how bad the day is for Damian," Steph said, "and it's bad for me, too, so… I was thinking we should throw the new Batcows a surprise Mother's Day party!" she said gleefully, referencing the two cows that she and Jason and Damian had cow-napped from a dairy farm, along with their calves, to save them from becoming veal dinners.</p><p>"I can sew them capes, because they don't have any," Steph said, looking very excited. "Bruce hasn't let Batcow back into the Batcave since they built the barn so she can't steal any more for her new friends."</p><p>"That is a fabulous idea," Jason said, completely serious and seriously amused.</p><p>"Why, thank you, baby," Steph said graciously, smacking a big kiss onto his cheek.</p><p>"Is the surprise for the cows or for Damian?" Jason asked her, just to clarify.</p><p>"For both," Steph said. "But I think we should warn Damian ahead of time that we have something planned for him. So he has it to look forward to, because it's not like he has a dead mom to visit at the cemetery," Steph said with empathy. "I don't want him to feel left out."</p><p>"Plus, assassins don't like surprises," Jason said gravely. "Better to let him prepare himself for what's coming rather than we startle him and get ourselves stabbed to death."</p><p>"Right," Steph agreed solemnly.</p><p>A little foresight went a long way towards staying alive, after all.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Morning Has Broken</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A long chapter and we're still not close to done!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Despite all of their plans with the Batfamily and the capes that she had made for the Batcows and the fantastical bovine cake that she had lovingly prepared for them out of apples, carrots, cabbage, and the dandelion leaves that she had hunted all over Gotham for, Steph was still feeling depressed and anxious when she was finally able to drift off to sleep in Jay's arms the night before Mother's Day.</p><p>She couldn't stop thinking about her baby. Or crying.</p><p>Jason had made love to her so sweetly before they'd gone to bed, and then he'd held her and rocked her in his arms while she sobbed when the memories overcame her before sleep could.</p><p>And he had definitely helped take the edge off of her pain, because at least Steph wasn't alone with her grief this year, and that was a huge comfort.</p><p>But nothing could fill the child-sized hole in Steph's heart.</p><p>Her little girl would be starting kindergarten this year - or, fuck, maybe she was already in it? Steph wasn't sure exactly how the ages and grades went. It kind of depended what month your birthday was in, she thought she remembered, thinking back to childhood friends and the schoolyard drama of who turned the next age first and last.</p><p>Realizing that she didn't even know if her baby had started school yet or not was a truly shit feeling, Steph had to say. Not that every other first she knew she'd missed didn't feel equally shitty.</p><p>First word. First steps. First tooth. First smile.</p><p>Steph had refused to even see her baby when she'd given birth. She knew if she'd looked at her precious face, if she'd touched her little hands and held her, that she'd change her mind and never be able to let her go.</p><p>And Steph had made her mind up that her baby's safety mattered more than her own happiness. Her dad, Cluemaster, had a lot of enemies back then, and Steph had been plagued with nightmare after nightmare of them coming after her baby to get back at her dad.</p><p>So Steph had finally decided that she couldn't risk her baby's life. She couldn't.</p><p>But the sacrifice that she made to protect her little one had broken Steph's heart and continued to break it on a daily basis. It was why she'd become Batgirl again after returning to Gotham. She had to keep busy, or else the memories and the grief became too much to bear. And fighting baddies fought her depression at the same time, so it was a win-win.</p><p>The vigilante life it was, therefore - despite having been tortured near to death for three days by Black Mask back when she was Robin and subsequently kidnapped away to Africa by Dr. Leslie Thompkins, who had lied to Bruce and Tim and her family, letting them think that Steph had died.</p><p>Steph knew that Bruce and Babs and Tim were shocked that she'd gone right back into the superhero game after escaping from Leslie. Hanging up her costume for good would have been a far saner choice. But they didn't understand about her ceaseless mourning for her baby and Steph wasn't inclined to explain it to them.</p><p>Cass got it without Steph saying a word. Because she was Cass, and she understood that an unquenchable thirst for justice wasn't only about fighting the rogues - it was often also about fighting the nightmares from the past.</p><p>That's why Cass had given Steph her Batgirl suit when she'd left Gotham. God, how Steph missed her.</p><p>Tim had thought that she was slightly crazy to become Batgirl, Steph knew. He'd tried to stop her once or twice from becoming Spoiler when she'd first returned - and then tried again to prevent her from being Batgirl - but when Steph had finally lashed out at his controlling interference, he'd backed off.</p><p>They had been dating back then. They were together before she had supposedly died and Steph knew that her death had broken Tim into a million sharp pieces. Despite Tim dating someone else for a little while in the interim, it had been over before Steph's return and she and Tim had promptly gotten back together.</p><p>Steph had been overjoyed at the time that Tim still loved her and still wanted to be with her. She'd thought back then that they'd be together forever. Hell, she'd fully intended to marry Tim one day.</p><p>But then Bruce had appeared to die, leaving behind instructions for Steph to carry out a few last orders designed to prepare Tim to move forward without his Batman. It was the Dark Knight's final act of mentorship to his Robin.</p><p>Was Steph supposed to ignore Bruce's last request, or decide for Tim and Bruce both that Tim wasn't allowed to have that final, lovingly prepared care package from his mentor and friend?</p><p>And Steph hadn't only followed through on Bruce's wishes for his sake and for Tim's.</p><p>She had done it for herself, too. Because she was also Robin, dammit, and this was the last chance that she'd ever have to do what her Batman asked of her.</p><p>For once in her life, Steph was determined to get it right for him. She owed Batman that much. And she was so honored that he'd entrusted the task to her.</p><p>Not to Dick. Not to Damian or Jason or Alfred.</p><p>To <em>her.</em></p><p>His Robin who he'd once fired.</p><p>So, yeah, Steph had followed through: left the trail of bread crumbs just like Bruce had asked, contacted the mercenary allies who Bruce had long ago recruited to play their parts one day in Robin's final test, if needed. She put the pieces in motion and prodded Tim into action.</p><p>Steph had done it all.</p><p>And Tim had passed his test with flying colors.</p><p>Only to learn at the end that the mystery he'd been unraveling had been a sham. But instead of being grateful to Batman and feeling appreciative of the training quest that his mentor had led him on from beyond the grave, Tim had lashed out. Hard.</p><p>At Steph.</p><p>Telling her that he couldn't trust her anymore. Berating her for lying to him. Accusing her of manipulating his emotions. Ranting at her that she should have known better than to trick him after the brutal way that Leslie had tricked all of them with Steph's death.</p><p>So he'd broken up with her.</p><p>Steph had refused to believe it at first.</p><p>She couldn't believe it.</p><p>After everything they'd been through - after Tim thinking she'd <em>died </em>and then his ecstatic, overwhelming joy when she'd come back - and how long and hard they'd loved each other - after he'd been there for her baby's birth, for fuck's sake! - Steph couldn't believe that this was it, that they were done, and all over Batman's final wish for his Robin gone wrong.</p><p>Because hadn't Tim always followed Bruce's commands over the years, unquestioningly and without fail, no matter what they were? No matter if those orders had included hiding his civilian name from Steph for months and months while they were first dating?</p><p>Even though he knew Steph's real identity underneath Spoiler, and even though Steph had actively and vocally hated the inequality and imbalance that Tim's secrecy had burdened their relationship with.</p><p>But when Steph did what Bruce asked - once, for the last and final time that she possibly could - Tim decided that he was done with her.</p><p>She'd given him time to cool off and then she'd reached out to him again and again to show she still cared and that she wanted to stay together.</p><p>But it hadn't mattered.</p><p>Tim had rebuffed each of her olive branches and finally told her coldly in no uncertain terms that they were never, ever, ever getting back together.</p><p>Like, ever.</p><p>But he was way less cute when he said it and way more hurtful. Then he cut Steph off, refusing to answer her texts or phone calls. So now, Tim and Steph weren't even friends anymore and that hurt almost as badly as being dumped in the first place.</p><p>It wasn't like Steph didn't understand that Tim had lost multiple people back to back, starting with her. Both of his parents and then Superboy, his best friend, had died while she was trapped in Africa. And Steph had barely made it home before Bruce seemed to die, too.</p><p>Then Dick had become Batman and taken the Robin mantle from Tim to give to Damian, which Tim refused to understand or to get over, an attitude that Steph couldn't help but see as selfish, despite the fact that he was mired in grief and depression.</p><p>Damian was a badly abused kid - still only a child! - who had been raised by assassins before being abruptly plopped down into a new life and a new family and abandoned by his mom.</p><p>And then the father who he was just beginning to know, died.</p><p>Of course Damian needed Robin! He needed Dick's parenting and Dick's mentorship and guidance. He needed a positive outlet for his violence and an honorable way to use his skills. He needed to be shaped into a hero.</p><p>Tim had already done his work of learning to become a hero under Bruce's guidance, and it wasn't like Dick was casting Tim off - he was merely graduating him to the next level. Because Tim was an adult.</p><p>But Tim either couldn't or wouldn't see the orphaned child in Damian.</p><p>And then Tim had spent the next many months not only on Bruce's wild goose chase of a training test, but also stubbornly hunting for Bruce in the past, insisting that he was alive and that he could save him.</p><p>Maybe Steph's obedience to Bruce had been one betrayal too many. The straw that broke the camel's back, as it were.</p><p>Or… maybe Tim had slowly been turning into someone else in the years since Steph had 'died' as he went through tragedy after tragedy. Maybe the two of them would have broken up eventually, anyway, even if Steph hadn't followed Bruce's orders.</p><p>Because the truth was, Steph and Jason were better matched as a couple than she and Tim had ever been, despite how in love she and Tim used to be. And if Steph was being completely honest, she was happier with Jason than she'd ever before in her life thought that it was possible to be.</p><p>But it would have been nice if all of the good of Jason could erase the hurt and pain that was still festering in Steph's heart from the gaping wound that Tim had punched there when he'd shoved her out of his life.</p><p>Seeing him today was going to be hell.</p><p>Which was one of only many reasons that Steph was groaning miserably before she even opened her eyes when the alarm went off bright and early on Mother's Day to rouse her and Jason to the family gathering at the cemetery.</p><p>She slapped for the snooze button groggily and rolled over in bed, wanting to snuggle up against Jason's warm body for a few more precious minutes, but Jason wasn't there.</p><p>Confused, Steph opened her eyes and looked around the room. No Jason.</p><p>But… was that bacon she smelled? And coffee?</p><p>Before she could even sit up in bed, Jason was coming through the bedroom door, beaming at her.</p><p>And Steph started crying in shock, because he was holding a breakfast tray in his hands filled with strawberry-whipped-cream-covered-waffles, bacon, coffee, purple tulips, and a wrapped present.</p><p>"Jase," Steph gasped in disbelief. "What's all this?"</p><p>"Happy Mother's Day, baby," Jason said sweetly, carefully setting the tray down before bending in to press his mouth to Steph's in a warm kiss.</p><p>"For me?" Steph gaped, looking at him and then back down at the gift and flowers.</p><p>"Of course for you," Jason said, gently brushing her bedhead hair back from her face and tucking it behind her ears.</p><p>Steph sniffed, hard.</p><p>"You're the best mom I know, Steph," Jason said warmly. "And you deserve to be told that on Mother's Day."</p><p>Steph's tears turned to sobs, because Jason's validation over her choice to give her baby up for adoption had been the moment on their past cow-napping adventure when the two of them had started to fall in love with each other, when they realized that they had a much more powerful connection and shared trauma history than they had previously thought.</p><p>Steph choked out, "Move the tray. I need to hug you."</p><p>Jason laughed a little bit but he took the tray and set it on the floor so he could climb into bed and wrap his arms around his girl, pulling her in close to his chest as he kneeled in front of her, stroking her head while she cried all over him.</p><p>Yeah, Jason definitely did not mind when Steph cried, he thought to himself contentedly.</p><p>"I love you so much," he said as he snuggled and comforted his weeping fiancée.</p><p>"I love you, too," Steph sobbed out, squeezing him as tightly as she could.</p><p>She caught her breath after a minute and grabbed the sheets to wipe her wet and snotty face, laughing a little bit.</p><p>"My waffle is going to get cold," she mumbled and Jason laughed hard, kissing her all over her damp cheeks and mouth before standing up to replace her tray on the bed.</p><p>"Be right back," he said. "Gonna get mine."</p><p>"Ok," Steph said, picking up her fork to break off a piece of the most delicious concoction known to humankind and reverentially placing it in her mouth.</p><p>Jason returned with a tray full of his own breakfast and came to sit next to her on the bed.</p><p>"I love the flowers," Steph said happily, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder while she chewed her waffle.</p><p>"I thought you might," Jason smiled.</p><p>Because it wasn't like his once crisply decorated red and black apartment had taken on such a massive quantity of purple accessories and decorations since Steph had moved in that red had transitioned to being the accent color instead of the primary color in their home.</p><p>And it wasn't like Jason minded that change one bit.</p><p>"Open your present while you chew," Jason said, nudging Steph's side as she took another bite of waffle, saving the bacon for last.</p><p>Because she had priorities. Obviously.</p><p>"Ok," Steph said, picking up the tiny package.</p><p>She unwrapped a tiny jewelry box and gave Jason a warm look before opening it and letting out a soft, happy sound. Because Jason had gotten her a necklace where the silver pendant was shaped like a stick woman wearing a triangle shaped dress, with Steph's birthstone, peridot, in the mom's round head and her baby's birthstone, aquamarine, in the mom's belly.</p><p>"Oh, Jason, I love it," Steph breathed out. "Thank you so much," she sniffed, the tears starting again as she gave him a kiss that tasted like strawberries.</p><p>"I thought you could wear it to feel like your baby is a little closer to you," Jason mumbled with a smile, pleased that his gift had been well received.</p><p>"I will," Steph said. "Every day," she added, pulling it out of the box and handing it to Jason so he could fasten it around her neck.</p><p>She delicately fingered the charm once the necklace was on, enjoying the tactile sensation of her fingers running over the two gems. Jason smiled at her and Steph reached up to kiss him one more time before leaning comfortably into his side and picking up her fork again.</p><p>"How are <em>you</em> feeling today, babe?" Steph asked Jason with some concern as he began to eat, too.</p><p>"Not so bad so far," Jason said. "I was so excited about making this morning special for you and giving you your present that I didn't really get sad last night or yet today," he said, sounding quite pleased both with himself and at that fact, which warmed Steph's heart and made her smile at her adorable man.</p><p>"I know I'll be a mess at the cemetery, though," Jason said peacefully, "but that's the point of going. To cry and let all that shit out. And then drown our sorrows afterwards with fattening brunch foods."</p><p>"Poor Damian," Steph said with a playful grin. "I don't think super healthy vegan alternative dishes will be as effective at the drowning of the sorrows."</p><p>"That's why he's getting a Batcow party later," Jason pointed out. "His animals will drown his sorrows. Without the prerequisite of being devoured first."</p><p>"True," Steph agreed solemnly.</p><p>"So I wanted to ask you something, babe," Jason said as they continued to eat bacon and waffles, "and today seemed like kind of an appropriate day."</p><p>"Ok," said Steph, eyeing him curiously.</p><p>"We've never talked about if we want to have kids or not," Jason said. "Do you think you might want to one day?"</p><p>Steph's eyes flew up to his.</p><p>"Not right away or anything," Jason said quickly. "I know you're only twenty and you might not want them until you're thirty at least."</p><p>"Do you want to have kids?" Steph said a little shyly, not able to tear her gaze away from Jason's soft and intimate regard.</p><p>"Yeah," Jason said, smiling. "If you want to," he added, stroking her arm with his fingers. "I like kids," he said.</p><p>"Me, too," Steph said quietly, unable to keep still more tears out of her eyes even though the corners of her mouth were turning up.</p><p>"So, yes?" Jason said with some eagerness, his smile starting to get really wide.</p><p>Steph nodded and Jason may have made the cutest little excited noise before he was kissing her passionately. Steph tried to laugh away her tears when he finally let her go.</p><p>"You're going to make the most amazing dad," she said to Jason, feeling her happiness bubble up at the thought of Jason with their kids.</p><p>"And I would love to be pregnant again and keep our babies this time," she said, laying a hand on her belly. "Not that more babies will ever replace my first baby," she said a little sadly.</p><p>"I know," Jason said compassionately. "It's always going to hurt that she's living with another family and that's ok," he said, reaching up to stroke Steph's hair.</p><p>She sighed and leaned into his touch.</p><p>"My dad's been dead for awhile, and a lot more years will have gone by before we'd have kids, but I'm still gonna be kind of worried about keeping them safe," Steph said. "Especially considering that he outed me as Robin back when he thought I'd died."</p><p>"I mean, at least nobody knows that I'm Batgirl, but there still might be some rogues who'd want to hurt the former Robin's kids," she said a little nervously.</p><p>"I pity the fool who comes after our kids," Red Hood said with a deadly seriousness that made Steph feel safe all the way down to her bones.</p><p>And a little turned on.</p><p>"But we'll also hire Damian as a bodyguard if we have to," Jason said after a minute of consideration, a sly smile creeping onto his face at the idea of the former assassin protecting their future kids.</p><p>"Oh my God!" Steph exclaimed, bouncing on the bed a little bit. "Best idea ever!" she said.</p><p>"Damian would be so good at that," she grinned, "and then he wouldn't ever have to get a real job."</p><p>"Cause God only knows what he could do," Jason mused, laughing as he thought of Damian's, well, eccentric, personality.</p><p>"Oh, he could be a vet," Steph psshed. "Or an animal activist or run an animal sanctuary or something."</p><p>"Wayne Manor is going to <em>be </em>an animal sanctuary by the time we have kids," Jason giggled. "You know he's been pushing us to hurry up and make plans to steal Babe the pig with him. And then we're gonna have to kidnap the sheep for Babe to herd."</p><p>"Yeah, but we have to get a second barn built first," Steph argued. "Or modify the existing one a little bit. Because how is he gonna house cows and pigs and sheep all together in the same barn?"</p><p>"Those kinds of animals don't eat each other, do they?" Jason said in confusion, frowning. "Couldn't they all live together?"</p><p>"They don't in most rescues I've looked at," Steph said. "They each have their own house."</p><p>"Well, fuck," Jason groaned. "That means we gotta get Bruce and Alfred out of town for at least a week so we can sneak construction crews in to put the new barns up."</p><p>Jason let out a very Titus-like whine of self-pity as he flopped backwards onto the bed.</p><p>"We should've stopped with the cows," he grumbled.</p><p>"But you love us," Steph said with a playful grin, laying down over him now that their breakfast trays were empty.</p><p>"And you want to make us happy," Steph continued, flopping her limbs on top of him like a jellyfish.</p><p>"Me and Damian are your two favorite people in the whole wide world," she teased him, pressing little kisses onto Jason's face and running her hands through his hair as she wiggled against him.</p><p>"Alfred trumps Damian," Jason muttered against her love pecks. "Because Alfred doesn't want to go rescuing all the suffering animals of the world. He eats bacon like a normal human being."</p><p>"Ok, that's fair," Steph conceded with a grin. "And an accurate assessment of the situation. I won't tell Damian he's not your second favorite."</p><p>"Everybody knows Alfred is my second favorite," Jason laughed.</p><p>"But," he said as he thought some more about another animal caper, "I suppose our first animal-napping was quite romantic," he conceded with a flirty look, his eyes heating up as he thought about his and Steph's wild ride of a first date.</p><p>"You know it was," Steph smirked, giving him a long kiss on the mouth.</p><p>"And it was good to bond with little D, finally," Jason acknowledged when he came up for air, smiling with an almost parental warmth now over his younger brother.</p><p>"I'm really glad I patched things up with him and that we're so close now," he admitted.</p><p>"All from cow-napping," Steph nodded.</p><p>"All because I kissed you in Batcow's barn," Jason countered with a sexy grin, reaching up to tug Steph's legs apart so he could sit up with Steph straddling him on her knees.</p><p>He slid his hands along her back seductively before re-enacting their first kiss, making Steph moan, "Do we have time?"</p><p>"We gotta shower before we go," Jason pointed out pragmatically. "Kill two robins with one stone?"</p><p>"Deal," Steph giggled, giving him one more quick kiss before grabbing his hand to yank him off the bed so she could drag him into the bathroom.</p><p>They were both clean and smiley when they showed up at the cemetery not long after.</p><hr/><p>The same could not be said for the rest of the BatFamily.</p><p>Oh, they were clean, certainly. But apprehensive at best, and Tim was downright glowering.</p><p>Although Steph knew that rather than pure anger, Tim was wrestling with a mixed bag of the difficulty of the holiday, grief over his dead parents, hurt and unresolved anger towards Dick and Damian, pure loathing towards Jason, and … Steph didn't even know what Tim was feeling towards her.</p><p>He'd been the one to break up with her, after all, and then cut her out of his life.</p><p>But he'd claimed that she'd betrayed him. Just like he'd accused Dick of doing, when Dick gave Robin to Damian. And Steph knew in her gut that Tim saw her relationship with Jason as yet another betrayal.</p><p>Because Jason had tried to kill Tim when the former dead Robin was hopped up on Lazarus Pit rage and feeling betrayed himself by Bruce and his Replacement Robin.</p><p>And yeah, Steph knew being almost beaten to death wasn't something a person got over, even though Jason hadn't been in control of himself at the time that he'd done it. She didn't expect Tim to ever like Jason. Or Damian, for that matter, who had also tried to kill Tim twice when he first arrived in Gotham.</p><p>
  <em>I thought it would please you, Father, if I killed my rival to demonstrate my superior battle skills and thereby claim my rightful place at your side.</em>
</p><p>Yeah, Damian had been a trip. Clearly the little dude had desperately needed to be Robin, though! Anyone ought to be able to see that, feelings hurt or not. Look how calm and mostly socially adequate little D was now most of the time, since taking on Dick's former role! The kid had even become a vegan, for crying out loud.</p><p>But Steph didn't think for a second that Tim was ever obligated to like Jason and Damian after what they'd done to him and she'd always passionately defended Tim to anyone in the family who said differently.</p><p>She definitely got that her being with Jason had to feel awful for Tim.</p><p>But it still hurt like hell to see the judgment and cold look in his eyes when he watched her and Jason traipse up to join him and the rest of the family at Martha Wayne's grave, their arms wrapped around each other with the loving afterglow of shower sex hanging off of them and big bunches of flowers in their hands for all the dead moms.</p><p>Steph tried to smile at him, but Tim deliberately looked away.</p><p>"Happy Mother's Day, Steph," Bruce said, though, moving forward to give her a hug and a kiss on her cheek before handing her a big bouquet of lilacs.</p><p>"For me?" Steph faltered like she had done with Jason earlier in the morning, looking up at Bruce with surprised tears once again in her eyes.</p><p>Because it was one thing for Jason to make the day special for her; he was her guy. But for Bruce to remember her, too? It was possibly more positive acknowledgement at once than Steph had ever gotten in her entire life.</p><p>"I'm sure today is hard for you," Bruce murmured sympathetically, noticing the pleased and ridiculously grateful look on Jason's face as he looked at his father in wonder.</p><p>That gave Bruce another round of happy fuzzies inside, the same as he'd gotten when Jason had called him earlier in the week insisting that the whole family get together to celebrate Mother's Day like they used to - a request which had shocked the socks off of Bruce, who may have emerged from his locked study later that night with his face a soggy mess and his cheeks turning red under Alfred's knowing eyes at the dinner table.</p><p>Steph blinked and gave Bruce a little smile, accidentally catching Tim's eye afterwards, causing him to immediately flush, looking slightly guilty, before he dropped his gaze down to his shoes.</p><p>Because it wasn't like he had gotten anything for Steph or had even been planning to say Happy Mother's Day to her - even though he'd supported her through Lamaze classes way back when and had been at her side for her baby's birth.</p><p>His shoelaces suddenly became fascinating while his insides churned.</p><p>"Jason got me a necklace with mine and my baby's birthstones," Steph said to the family with heartfelt pride in her man, lifting it up to show Bruce first, who shot Jason an impressed glance before admiring it.</p><p>"That was very thoughtful," Bruce said warmly.</p><p>"Well done, ahki," Damian said, giving Jason an approving nod as he craned his head up to look, prompting Steph to bend down a little bit so he could see it more easily.</p><p>"That's beautiful," Babs said, rolling her chair forward to look, too, and also beaming at Jason.</p><p>"You did good, Jason," Dick said, smiling warmly as he came over to hug his brother.</p><p>"Alfred raised me well," Jason mused dramatically, but he winked at Bruce as he said it, who chuckled without offense.</p><p>Alfred clucked his tongue.</p><p>"I am gratified to see that at least one of my grandchildren had the good sense to take my lessons of etiquette and chivalry to heart," he said before pulling Jason into a tight hug.</p><p>Jason was undisputedly Alfred's favorite.</p><p>Which Dick didn't mind in the least, because Dick knew that it was due to them losing Jason once and then getting him back from the dead. Besides, Dick was the first and oldest grandchild, and he knew that his place in Alfred's heart was secure.</p><p>Damian didn't mind Alfred's favoritism, because Alfred was in the habit of bringing home unexpected pets for his youngest grandson. Plus, Damian quite liked Jason himself, even if he couldn't yet bring himself to say out loud that he loved him.</p><p>Of course, no one could ever best Dick in Damian's mind - but Jason was a very satisfactory brother, Damian was forced to admit. Especially since he had started dating Steph, who Damian secretly adored for her outlandish antics, which often had the most welcome side effect of benefiting him in some way.</p><p>As with the Great Batcow Friendship Quest, for instance, and the Dead Robin Underwear Scheme. Yes, Pennyworth could prefer and spoil Jason all he liked. Damian was untroubled by it.</p><p>Cass, who was still out of the country, didn't mind it either, because she was unselfish and didn't view love as a competition. She had a favorite person, too, after all - Steph. So why shouldn't Grandfather Alfred have one?</p><p>Tim minded dreadfully and used it as more fuel for his myriad resentments which were threatening to bury him deeper than the corpses that the family was currently standing over. He shifted miserably, intently studying the blades of grass at his feet.</p><p>Tim had been somewhat pleased at first when Dick had reached out to invite him to Mother's Day - until he had learned that the entire family was coming. Meaning, of course, Jason and Stephanie.</p><p>Tim had figured from the start that he couldn't avoid seeing Damian on Mother's Day since Dick and Bruce were both apparently coming, but the combination of dread and loathing that he felt in the pit of his stomach when he thought about Jason and Steph made him beg Dick to let him off the hook.</p><p>"Tim, you have to come," Dick had said to him firmly. "This is for the whole family, which includes you. And Jason was the one who brought up inviting you, anyway, before I even had a chance to mention it to him. He wants you there."</p><p>Tim growled silently on his end of the phone before answering.</p><p>"He's dating Steph," the former Robin said petulantly, as if that explained everything, while he picked at the fraying sleeve of his sweater.</p><p>"He's engaged to Steph," Dick said as gently as he could, "which you know, Tim. Look, I get that's hard for you," Dick said sympathetically, "but we all love you, Timbers. And you need the family as much as we all need you."</p><p>Tim sighed heavily, feeling the familiar tightness in his chest that came whenever he thought of his family these days. His family that had fallen apart and abandoned him as surely as Mom and Dad and Conner had as soon as Bruce had 'died' .</p><p>Bruce, though. Bruce had never abandoned Tim. (Except for getting stuck in the past, but Tim didn't count that. It was an accident, after all.)</p><p>Bruce loved him. Bruce had benched Damian without hesitation when Tim came back from the Teen Titans so that Tim could be his Robin again.</p><p>Of course, Steph had lost her shit over that and stuck up for the demon-brat and even punched Tim's nose in the process… but Bruce had only conceded to training with the kid two nights a week and only then if Steph joined in so they could train as a trio.</p><p>Tim wasn't getting replaced.</p><p>It sucked that Red Hood had forced his way into the training, too, like the arrogant prick he was - as if Batman wasn't competent enough to train his own two Robins! Seriously, the nerve of Jason Todd, Tim thought angrily.</p><p>Because Tim could have handled seeing Steph in the BatCave once in a while if she came by herself, but he couldn't stomach seeing her with Jason. So on the nights that the couple came over to train, Tim made sure to leave for his solo patrols as Red Robin well before they showed up and he didn't return until Bruce gave him the all clear.</p><p>Yeah, Bruce was on Tim's side.</p><p>He was a good dad and understood that Steph getting together with Jason had been a sucker punch to the gut for Tim. Which was why Tim really, really, really did not want to come to Mother's Day.</p><p>The day was awful enough for him without seeing his ex-girlfriend with the guy who'd tried to kill him.</p><p>"It's only going to get easier to deal with Jason and Steph being together if you stop avoiding them," Dick was saying.</p><p>That assumed, of course, that Tim wanted Steph and Jason's relationship to become easier for him to deal with.</p><p>He did not.</p><p>"It's such a hard day for me already, Dick," Tim said, allowing a bit of a pathetic whine into his voice. "I don't think I can handle being around the two of them on top of it."</p><p>"Bruce will be so disappointed if you don't come," Dick said with genuine distress. "He wants to be able to help you get through Mother's Day the same way that he used to help me, when I had just lost my mom."</p><p>"Oh," Tim said quietly, not at all liking the guilt that was suddenly accosting him. "Well, I guess…" he mumbled reluctantly as his insides screamed.</p><p>"If it means that much to Bruce…"</p><p>"It really does," Dick assured him. "He feels so awful over all of us thinking he'd died, especially with not being able to be there for you the last few Mother's Days because of it, and I know he's got his heart set on you being there on Sunday and the whole family being together."</p><p>"Ok," Tim muttered as he stabbed a notepad on his desk a thousand times with a pencil.</p><p>"Thank you, little bird," Dick said with relief. "I promise, no one's going to pick fights with you or anything like that," he said. "And I'll look out for you," he promised.</p><p>Tim didn't bother to tell Dick that he considered his promises absolutely worthless.</p><p>But as Tim shuffled his feet at the cemetery while he died inside listening to everyone complimenting Jason for being sooooo thoughtful to Steph on Mother's Day, and as the guilt weighed him down that he, Timothy Drake-Wayne, had deliberately planned to ignore his one-time best friend and girlfriend, whose pregnancy and childbirth he had liberally supported her through when no one else would, the arms that Tim suddenly felt wrapping around him were Dick's.</p><p>"How you holding up, Timmy?" Dick whispered in his ear, pulling Tim in tight to his chest and cradling him like he was a baby.</p><p>Or something.</p><p>"Fine," Tim lied.</p><p>Dick hummed sympathetically and kept hugging him, clearly not buying it for a second.</p><p>"I love you," Dick said. "I'm glad you came."</p><p><em>I'm not</em>, Tim thought, but he didn't say so.</p><p>He just stood stiffly in Dick's arms, letting his older brother hug him without doing much to return the affection.</p><p>"Should we get started?" Bruce was saying so Dick finally let him go, but he surprised Tim by standing next to him and slinging an arm over his shoulders while reaching his other hand out for Babs, who had rolled up next to him.</p><p>Damian, thankfully, was hovering closer to Jason and Steph, even though it wasn't like Tim could really avoid him, as many people as they were crowded around a single grave, although it did have quite the majestically elaborate headstone that was larger than many in the cemetery.</p><p>Alfred laid a gentle hand on Bruce's back as Bruce glanced around the circle to make sure that he had the entire family's attention. He smiled extra warmly when his eyes landed on Tim, whose returning smile was easily pulled out of him despite his bitterness at being present.</p><p>It faded quickly, though, at Bruce's first words.</p><p>"We haven't spent Mother's Day as a family like this since we lost Jason," Bruce said bravely, turning to look at his resurrected son with tears in his eyes and reaching his hand out to grasp Jason's hand tightly in his.</p><p>"It's ok, Pops," Jason murmured supportively as Bruce had to pause for a moment to clear his throat before going on.</p><p>Bruce squeezed his hand tighter and nodded at him, keeping their hands locked as he continued to speak.</p><p>"The first year I spent Mother's Day like we will today was the one after my mom was killed," Bruce said softly, turning to look up at Alfred, who gave him a little smile and inched closer to him.</p><p>"Alfred said we had to commemorate the day; that it wouldn't be right to ignore it. So we came here," Bruce sighed, getting lost in the memories for a minute, because it was in front of this very tombstone and on this very ground that he had stood as a seven-year old boy, gasping and crying in Alfred's arms and missing his mom so damn much that he'd wished that he could die, too, except that would have left poor Alfred all alone and Bruce would never wish more sadness upon Alfred.</p><p>The billionaire didn't even realize that he was wiping his eyes.</p><p>"We both knew my mom, of course, but Alfred started asking me questions about my specific memories of her," he said, "and then he'd tell me his memories about his mom."</p><p>Alfred's smile misted up as his eyes got watery and he removed a clean and pressed handkerchief from his pocket to dab at his eyes.</p><p>"Quite so, Master Bruce," he smiled.</p><p>"And when we got home," Bruce said, "Alfred taught me how to make my mom's latkes," he said.</p><p>"We're having <em>latkes </em>today?" Steph squealed, jumping up and down.</p><p>"Yes," Bruce laughed. "Technically they're for Hanukkah, which you probably know, but they were one of the few dishes that my mom cooked herself," he grinned, "because it was her holiday and her tradition with her own mom growing up."</p><p>"Latkes!" Steph hummed happily to herself under her breath, doing a little dance. "Almost as good as waffles," she sang merrily. "Which we're also having, thanks to me!"</p><p>The anger that normally filled the hollowness in Tim's chest where his heart used to be drained as quickly as if a plug had been pulled and he had to swallow hard, because he suddenly missed Steph so much that he wanted to cry.</p><p>"Alfred let you drop potato pancakes into boiling hot oil at age seven?" Dick was saying skeptically, looking from Bruce to the elderly butler with a raised eyebrow.</p><p>"Well, no," Bruce admitted, starting to laugh at Alfred's aghast face.</p><p>"I should hope not, sir!" Alfred sputtered. "Master Bruce was allowed to prepare them and his responsible, elder guardian fried them," Alfred said with great dignity, making Dick laugh, but Damian frowned.</p><p>"I am quite certain that my Father would have been more than capable of safely preparing fried foods at age seven," Damian said severely. "By the time that I was seven, my mother had entrusted me for years with solo -"</p><p>Damian abruptly cut himself off as Dick's face crumbled into a horribly weepy looking agony at his son's words.</p><p>"That is, I was performing tasks with far greater risks to my life than hot oil poses," Damian amended with a little less brashness.</p><p>Jason slipped his arm off of Steph's waist and laid it on Damian's shoulder instead, rubbing it gently as the boy looked down at the ground uncomfortably.</p><p>"That's true, habibi," Jason said into the awkwardly painful silence.</p><p>"And I'll grant you, Pops is a hell of a man," Jason said, his eyes taking on a teasing gleam as he looked up at Bruce, who was still clinging to his dead son's hand like a lifeline, "but you, little D, were a far superior child," Jason decreed with an authority that dared anyone to contradict him.</p><p>Damian peeked up at Jason from under his eyebrows.</p><p>"Really?" he said in a small voice, looking to Bruce for either confirmation or denial.</p><p>"Without doubt, Master Damian," Alfred said before Bruce could come up with an appropriate answer. "Why, our young Master Bruce here was what they call a 'late bloomer.'"</p><p>"Alfred!" Bruce said in what sounded like shocked hurt, but his lips were twitching the barest bit at the corners.</p><p>"I have kept this truth from you for many years, sir," Alfred continued gravely, "in order to spare your feelings. I trust that you are now mature enough to handle this revelation without falling into despair," the butler said.</p><p>Bruce's jaw dropped. Steph began to giggle.</p><p>"A late bloomer, huh?" Babs said, winking at Bruce and grinning up at Alfred.</p><p>"Oh, yes, Miss Barbara," Alfred sighed. "Why, your husband, too, as a child was far more advanced than our dear Master Bruce had been at his age."</p><p>"Dick was in the circus!" Bruce protested, dropping Jason's hand so that he could firmly plant both of his on his hips as he stared at his guardian.</p><p>"Mm," Alfred murmured. "And he was a trapeze artist, was he not? Rather than a clown or a ticket taker."</p><p>"I don't believe this," Bruce huffed dramatically.</p><p>"Master Timothy as well," Alfred said, glancing over at the young man who was having to work harder than he'd expected to keep himself from relaxing into the family's laughter and camaraderie.</p><p>"Not only far more intelligent than you, sir," Alfred said, "but quite the gifted photographer as well. With a most passionate dedication to his craft, eh, young sir?" Alfred said with a meaningful smile, and Tim couldn't help the corners of his mouth turning up the smallest bit in remembering the way that he had spent his childhood, sneaking around Gotham by night to photograph Batman and Robin battling the Rogues.</p><p>"Damn, Pops," Jason said, starting to laugh harder. "You're getting roasted."</p><p>Bruce sighed and shook his head in dismay, but his eyes were giving away his delight at hearing his children laughing while his de facto father cracked jokes and he couldn't help but hope that his mom could hear them, too - the way that they were being a family together over her grave.</p><p><em>His </em>family.</p><p>Which meant that they were <em>her </em>family. Her grandchildren, gathered around to visit Mama Wayne on Mother's Day.</p><p>"Who's got the first question?" Bruce said, feeling his heart swell up with joy.</p><p>His mom was gone, but she was here, too - and Bruce was ready to tell his kids her stories.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>More to come! Family stories, Brunch, Drama (What? Who said that!) and... BATCOWS!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Matriarch Makes Her Mark</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Trigger warning - brief mention of attempted childhood sexual abuse, not graphically described.</p><p>Disclaimer - this is a work of fiction for entertainment purposes only. Do not kill anyone in real life for any reason; it is wrong and illegal. Don't do it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I'll ask the first question," Dick said, meeting Bruce's eyes warmly.</p><p>His oldest son knew the drill better than anyone, after all.</p><p>Before Dick had joined the family, Bruce and Alfred had let some of the formality of their joint Mother's Day tradition slide after Bruce had become an adult.</p><p>Oh, they always came to the cemetery and shared a few memories with each other, and they still had brunch afterwards, but it was more of their normal Sunday meal rather than a special one dedicated to their mothers. And, once Bruce had become Batman, they had thoroughly dispensed with the jigsaw puzzles, Bruce preferring to get back to work, instead, since crime didn't take holidays off.</p><p>But they had reinstated it all when Bruce had taken in Dick after his parents' murders. And Dick had proudly helped them pass the tradition on to Jason, when the scrappy lad from Crime Alley had joined the family.</p><p>The scrappy lad who had surprisingly clung so tightly to those few Mother's Day memories that he'd made with Bruce and Dick and Alfred that the grown up Jason Todd had been appalled to learn that the rest of the family had abandoned the rituals.</p><p>Dick's heart had overflowed with emotion after he'd gotten off of the phone with Jason earlier in the week and Babs had been awed when she listened to her husband weep over the phone with her, telling her how important the family was to Jason, after all.</p><p>Sometimes they had wondered.</p><p>Like when he'd come back from the dead and gone to Titans Tower first, before coming home, where he had beaten Tim nearly to death when he unexpectedly came across the boy wearing his Robin uniform.</p><p>Or when Jason had refused for the longest time to see any of the rest of the family after he and Bruce had finally met face to face in Gotham and fought over the Joker being on the wrong side of the ground.</p><p>Or when Bruce had 'died' and Jason had immediately turned his back on the fragile intimacy that he'd built up with his siblings over a few preceding years of Alfred's weekly family dinners, instead falling off the map and avoiding everyone in the family once again.</p><p>Except for Alfred, of course. Jason and Alfred's bond was forged in iron, in a way that the rest of the family couldn't understand.</p><p>It was only since Jason had started dating Steph a few months ago (whom he'd promptly gotten engaged to, to the family's shock) that the wayward Wayne son had finally begun making his way back into the fold.</p><p>And now he was the one who'd brought them all together again for Mother's Day, most of the family members here for the first time to celebrate and grieve in the Waynes' own special way, and Dick's tears were already starting to flow.</p><p>He cleared his throat.</p><p>"What was the most generous thing your mother ever did?" he asked Bruce, smiling at his adopted father as warmly as his father was smiling back at him, both of them thinking back to Dick's first Mother's Day here at this very cemetery when the boy barely came up to Bruce's chest and was crying so hard that he was choking on his tears, his face buried in Bruce's shirt and his back warmed by Alfred's soothing hand.</p><p>"Mm," Bruce thought. "That's a difficult one," he said, "given how much charity work my mom did and how many foundations she started. She took her mitzvah of tikkun olam very seriously," he said, looking around the circle at his family.</p><p>"That's our obligation to repair the world," Bruce explained, since the rest of his family not only wasn't Jewish, but hadn't ever seen him practice it.</p><p>Today was probably the most that any of them except for Dick and Jason had ever even heard him talk about his heritage, Bruce realized, feeling slightly guilty that he hadn't kept up more with his culture and religion for his mother's sake, if not for his own.</p><p>Maybe… maybe he would try to do better, he decided. His mom would like that.</p><p>"Mom believed that because our family was so privileged with wealth, we had a double responsibility to share what we'd been blessed with in ways that would help those who had less. But the most generous thing she ever did…" Bruce thought slowly.</p><p>"Well, it might seem small in light of all of the big things that she did," he said.</p><p>"But my grandmother, my dad's mother, that is, was dying of cancer. And she had never gotten along well with my mom. Thought mom was too talkative, too forthright, too assertive for a woman, you know."</p><p>Bruce smiled in agreement with Steph and Barbara's faces of shocked outrage, but he was proud to see that each one of his sons looked equally disgusted. Alfred, of course, was too polite to show it, but Bruce had known him long enough to recognize the tension in the corners of his lips and the slight wrinkle between his eyebrows that the negative memory of Thomas Wayne's mother produced.</p><p>"Grandmother was old money and had very strict ideas about how a society wife should behave," Bruce continued dryly. "And here was my mom, speaking up almost non-stop about problems in Gotham and how the wealthy ought to be addressing them," he said.</p><p>"Plus, Mom was Jewish and was raising me Jewish, and my Dad and his family weren't. Grandmother may not have ever said so in so many words, but I could tell that our religion bothered her," he said.</p><p>"It's fairly obvious to a child when someone doesn't like one of your parents, but especially so when it's your mother they don't care for," Bruce mused.</p><p>Alfred tutted under his breath and laid a comforting hand on Bruce's shoulder, who turned to smile at him appreciatively before drawing a deep breath to continue his story.</p><p>"Grandmother had a particularly aggressive form of cancer," Bruce said, "and had less than two months to live by the time they found it. So we took her in, of course," he said, "to care for her at Wayne Manor until she passed."</p><p>"And my mother rarely left Grandmother's side for the rest of her time here on earth," Bruce said.</p><p>"Despite the fact that Grandmother had routinely been just shy of rude to her my entire life and was now even crankier due to her illness and was lashing out towards all of us with extra doses of belligerence… despite all of that, my mother sat with Grandmother day in and day out, with a smile on her face."</p><p>"She'd read to her, or chat with her, or sit and watch soap operas, which my mother hated but my grandmother loved, and she never once complained about it, as far as I know," Bruce said.</p><p>"Nor as far as I know, sir," Alfred murmured fondly.</p><p>Steph thought to herself that Bruce's mom was a far better woman than she was, because Steph and Jason had dutifully mailed Crystal a Mother's Day card and even sent flowers and a gift certificate for a pedicure (both of which were Jason's suggestions), but they had told her mom that they were busy all day with Jason's family and couldn't see her.</p><p>And Steph didn't feel guilty about it.</p><p>There was only so much she could take on Mother's Day, and it wasn't like Mama Wayne had given a baby up for adoption, as far as Steph knew. More power to her, and good for her for being so awesomely generous, but… yeah.</p><p>Steph felt ok with herself and Jason's arm around her waist tugging her closer into his side told her that he was ok with her, too, which meant everything.</p><p>"That was my mother," Bruce was shrugging, though. "Fully dedicated to doing what she believed was right, regardless of the personal consequences to herself," he said.</p><p>"Sounds like somebody took after her, Pops," Jason said, glancing up at him warmly.</p><p>Bruce gave an abashed smile.</p><p>"Maybe," he said. "I never thought of it that way, but…" he trailed off, swallowing a little bit.</p><p>"In a way, then, she affected all of us," Dick said, his eyes shining brightly. "We're carrying on her legacy, doing what we do," he said, clasping Barbara's hand tightly in his and squeezing Tim's shoulders a little tighter.</p><p>"A lovely sentiment, Master Dick," Alfred said, removing his glasses to polish them on his handkerchief before dabbing his eyes.</p><p>Damian looked pensive at Dick's words, and Jason's heart seized up. Because Damian had inherited quite a different legacy from Ra's and his mother's side of the family, after all.</p><p>Steph seemed to notice Damian's mood as well, because she bent down and hugged Damian from behind.</p><p>"Your grandmother Wayne would have been very proud of you," she said quietly.</p><p>"Do you think so, Stephanie Brown?" Damian asked her, his voice trembling just a little bit as he turned his head to look at her.</p><p>"I know so," Steph said with conviction. "Because you don't only fight for justice for people," she said. "You fight for justice for animals, too. Especially for cows," she added in a whisper, getting a tiny smile to appear on the boy's face.</p><p>Jason caught Bruce smiling down at Steph with gratitude, and a lump filled Jason's throat, because he was so damn lucky to have Steph and he loved her so fuckin' much and she was gonna make such a great mom one day to their kids and the fact that Bruce approved of her, too? And appreciated her?</p><p>That meant more to Jason than he wanted it to.</p><p>"Next question," Bruce said, wiping his eyes a little bit with his fingers.</p><p>The family members looked at each other. Tim and Barbara and Damian seemed reluctant to speak up, as they were each staring at the ground and avoiding eye contact with everyone.</p><p>Alfred and Steph met each other's eyes but then glanced around the circle, both holding back in case someone else wanted to go first.</p><p>"I'll go," Jason said when no one spoke up.</p><p>"What was the kindest thing that your mother ever said to you?" he asked Bruce.</p><p>"Oh, that's easy," Bruce smiled. "I think of it often," he said to Jason's surprise.</p><p>"Bruce, you have a good heart to stand up for others," he quoted, "but your desire for vengeance will get you into trouble, if you let it."</p><p>Jason raised his eyebrows. Dick looked puzzled while Babs merely looked thoughtful. Tim had raised his eyes up from the ground at Bruce's words, but quickly returned them to his feet. Steph and Damian were frowning but Alfred was faintly smiling, as if recalling a memory.</p><p>"Father, I believe that you have misinterpreted your mother's remarks," Damian commented as he scratched Titus's ears while the great dane lay reposed at his feet.</p><p>"Grandmother appears to have been reprimanding you rather than paying you a compliment," the boy observed.</p><p>"Bubbe," Bruce corrected with a smile.</p><p>"She would have made you call her Bubbe," Bruce explained at Damian's quizzical face. "Not Grandmother. Grandmother was what I called my father's mother," he chuckled.</p><p>"Bubbe, then," Damian said. "Bubbe was offering constructive criticism in what is commonly known as a backhanded compliment," he said, making Alfred titter quietly behind a well-placed gloved hand.</p><p>Bruce actually laughed out loud, though.</p><p>"Sometimes the truth is the kindest gift you can give to someone, son," he said, kneeling down in front of Damian to run a hand through his son's hair.</p><p>"As I have learned many a time in my life, most recently at a certain talent night," he murmured under his breath so that Dick and Babs couldn't hear.</p><p>Jason and Steph heard perfectly though, and beamed at Bruce with pride even though their smiles were more than a little self-congratulatory. But Bruce's smile back to them was warm, and there was genuine gratitude in his eyes.</p><p>"What had you done that made your mom say that to you?" Steph asked him with a grin. "It must have been pretty good."</p><p>"I had beaten a certain Tommy Sanders to a bloody pulp," Bruce sighed in fond reminiscence as he stood back up. "For teasing my friend Cynthia about her frizzy hair."</p><p>"A ladies' man, even then," Babs quipped with a giggle, making Bruce huff at her.</p><p>"I was a good friend, nothing more," he said. "We were five, Barbara," he lectured her dryly.</p><p>Jason fell into a coughing fit at Bruce's words which soon turned to raucous laughter.</p><p>"Five years old, Pops?" he asked him, practically wheezing for breath.</p><p>"Yes," Bruce said peacefully.</p><p>"And you got on me for fighting kids in <em>high school</em>?"</p><p>Jason kept laughing, bending over double now.</p><p>"Shit, Pops. You came out of the cradle swinging."</p><p>"How badly did you beat the villain, Father?" Damian asked eagerly.</p><p>"Badly enough that my mother got called into the principal's office," Bruce said with what may have been a hint of pride.</p><p>"A nose may have been bloodied," he added, looking off into the distance like he was remembering something sweet.</p><p>"And two teeth knocked out," Alfred sniffed, making Dick's eyes pop out of his head as Tim's head snapped up, finally roused to interest as he stared as his mentor in wonder.</p><p>Barbara's jaw dropped in what looked like delight.</p><p>"B!" Steph grinned in enthusiastic appreciation, hopping up and down on the grass. "You were a little badass!"</p><p>"They were baby teeth," Bruce mumbled. "They grew back."</p><p>"Damn, Pops," Jason whistled. "Well done."</p><p>"Indeed," Damian nodded. "Perhaps you were not such a late bloomer as Pennyworth led us to believe," the former assassin said consolingly, even going so far as to stiffly pat his father's arm in an attempt at comfort.</p><p>"It sounds like your mother saw it differently," Poppa Dick pointed out with some amusement, ever the voice of restraint.</p><p>"She did," Bruce admitted. "She told me that it was one thing to stop a bully, but another to punish them."</p><p>"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," Alfred murmured, "I shall fully repay."</p><p>"Yes," Bruce said, giving him a little knowing smile.</p><p>"Although my mother phrased it from Torah, 'You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge," he said, "which is a guiding principle of Judaism."</p><p>"Her words have shaped my life," Bruce said softly, looking down at her tombstone.</p><p>"She couldn't possibly have known how many times her son would want to kill in the name of vengeance," Bruce sighed, his voice laced with pain as he bent down to trace his fingertips over Martha Wayne's carved name.</p><p>Jason shifted uncomfortably behind him and Steph gave her fiancé a sympathetic look as she took his hand in hers and squeezed his fingertips tight in silent understanding.</p><p>Steph had never judged Jason for using lethal force, unlike most of the other members of the Batfamily. He had committed to not killing anyone when he was out with Damian, and he wouldn't do it in front of his girl, either, for slightly different reasons… but there were some pieces of shit that Jason could not, in good conscience, let live to rape or kill another day.</p><p>"Is it going to bother you that I'm going to kill them?" he had asked Steph not long after she'd moved in when he'd gotten intel on child sex traffickers.</p><p>His eyes had looked worried as he strapped his gear on and loaded his guns. Truthfully, he'd been falling so hard and so fast for Steph, and they'd been so busy liberating cows and then straightening Bruce out about how he was treating Damian, that Jason had never stopped to think about how Steph might feel about his bloodier habits as Red Hood and they had yet to have a conversation about it.</p><p>"Fuck, no, it's not going to bother me," Steph had spat out with a passion that had both startled Jason and warmed his heart.</p><p>"Just be careful," she said, pulling him into a hug.</p><p>"I'm always careful, baby," Jason had replied, lifting a hand up to stroke her cheek.</p><p>"Ok, then," Steph said. "Call me if you need backup," she said. "Or call Oracle or B. I mean it," she said strongly. "Because if you die on me, Jason Todd, so help me -"</p><p>"Been there, done that," Jason said gently, cradling the back of her head in his hand.</p><p>"Not gonna repeat it," he promised her, meeting her anxious eyes with his steady, reassuring ones until she looked a little less worried.</p><p>"And I have backup coming with me," he said, "that won't hesitate to use lethal force, if needed."</p><p>"Someone safe?" Steph had frowned. "You trust them?"</p><p>"With my life," Jason said without hesitation.</p><p>"I'd take you with me, too, babe," he said, "but… I don't want you to look at me different after you see me kill somebody," he mumbled, dropping his eyes from hers.</p><p>"I will never look at you differently," Steph said firmly, reaching out with both hands to lift his face back up to hers. "You only kill people who deserve it," she said with complete conviction. "I know that," she said.</p><p>"But it's ok if you don't want me to see it," she added. "I might feel a little squeamish about it, anyway," she admitted with a shy smile.</p><p>"It really doesn't bother you, though, otherwise?" Jason asked her again, hardly able to believe it, because Steph was a Bat, too, and had been equally indoctrinated by Bruce in the no-killing rule.</p><p>Steph hesitated for the barest second.</p><p>"One of my dad's friends tried to rape me when I was a kid," she said softly.</p><p>Jason inhaled sharply. He had his arms wrapped around her and Steph tugged tightly against his chest without conscious thought, covering her protectively as if the asshole was there in the room about to prey on her again.</p><p>"I'll kill him," Jason said flatly. "Who was it?"</p><p>"My dad killed him," Steph said into his shoulder.</p><p>She turned her head to look up at him.</p><p>"My dad said he didn't believe me when I told him," she said, "and I was devastated. I stopped going outside because I was too scared that his friend might be out there waiting for me. And I stopped sleeping because I was worried that he might come over with my dad, or come over when my dad was out, which would be even worse."</p><p>Jason was growling in the back of his throat and the fact that he was angry on her behalf gave Steph the safest feeling that she'd ever known.</p><p>"My school called home because I was falling asleep in class," Steph said. "But I wouldn't tell my mom why or that I wasn't sleeping at night. Because my dad was kind of abusive sometimes," she said. "And he'd already yelled at me for lying about his friend and making up stories."</p><p>"But then, me and my mom were sitting around watching tv a few nights later, and my dad came in and said Joey Kramer had died from an overdose. Right in front of me he said it, like he wanted to make sure I knew."</p><p>"Good," Jason grunted and Steph nodded.</p><p>"My mom said she didn't think Joey did drugs and my dad said, 'Welp, sometimes people surprise you.'"</p><p>Steph paused to wipe some tears off of her face by rubbing them onto Jason's shoulder, since she was still in his boa constrictor embrace and not the slightest bit eager to be let go.</p><p>"Knowing he was dead, it was the only thing that made me feel safe again," Steph said, meeting Jason's eyes. "Even if he'd gone to jail, I'd have been scared, knowing he'd be out again one day, or could break out and find me and make me pay for telling on him."</p><p>"All those kids those people hurt, that you're going after tonight? They deserve to feel safe, too," Steph said with conviction. "You're a hero, Jason Todd, and don't you dare let the Batfamily tell you differently."</p><p>Jason had known before that he loved Steph and that she loved him, but in that instant, realizing that she not only accepted him as he was but was proud of him for what he did as Red Hood?</p><p>His heart fell into a whole 'nother plane of existence.</p><p>"I adore you," he breathed out to Steph before his tongue got tangled up with hers.</p><p>"I adore you, too," Steph had said back to him when they'd both come up for air, dizzy and hearts pounding and fiery love burning out of their eyes for each other.</p><p>So, here, in the cemetery, with Bruce's motherly caution about <em>not </em>killing hovering around in the air and making it hard for Jason to breathe, Steph's tight grip on his hand that said she still supported him felt really damn good.</p><p>What felt much less good was when Jason's eyes nervously flicked around the circle of family members before landing on the Replacement, who was, without being overtly obvious about it, sneering at Jason with a smug, derisive look on his face.</p><p>Jason grit his teeth and used all of his willpower to resist the temptation to dip Steph down into a lewd kiss, instead squeezing her hand so hard that she winced a little bit, looking up at him in surprise and then following his line of concentrated sight over to Tim.</p><p>Steph narrowed her eyes as she frowned at her ex-boyfriend, her face getting hard and angry.</p><p>"Isn't there a difference, though, Bruce," she heard herself saying, "between killing someone for vengeance and killing them for justice?"</p><p>Jason and Bruce both jerked in surprise and turned to look at her. Tim raised his eyebrows and replaced his sneer with a sardonic smirk instead, feeling relatively sure that Jason was about to get told off and Steph shut down.</p><p>But Bruce was looking at Jason's face with concern, now.</p><p>"Yes," he said slowly. "Yes, there is, Steph," he said, but he kept his eyes on his son's face as he spoke.</p><p>"My mother was warning me against taking revenge," he said. "I didn't need to knock out Tommy's teeth to stop him from bullying Cynthia. I didn't even need to hit him," Bruce said, searching Jason's eyes for what, Jason wasn't sure, but he couldn't tear his gaze away from his father's, despite how much pain was welling up in his soul.</p><p>"I could have used my words to stop Tommy," Bruce was saying without letting Jason's eyes go.</p><p>"I've always taken my mother's advice to mean that acting out of anger, for personal motives, was wrong, as well as doing more than what was required to stop evil," he said.</p><p>"But sometimes…" Bruce trailed off for a moment, lost in the miserably hopeless stare that Jason was piercing his soul with.</p><p>Bruce didn't kill. He couldn't. His mother wouldn't have liked it and for all the evil that Bruce saw in the world, the imagined disappointment in his mother's eyes if her son became a killer was the one sight above all others that Bruce couldn't bear to see.</p><p>He wasn't an idiot. He knew the justice system often failed. He knew what heinous crimes some people committed. But, for himself, the Bat had drawn a line that he wouldn't cross.</p><p>His son, though…</p><p>"Sometimes, a stronger hand is required," Bruce finally got out in a gravelly voice filled with emotion as he lifted a hand up to cup Jason's rough face.</p><p>Jason drew in a quick breath as tears filled his eyes, which Bruce's thumb gently wiped away.</p><p>Tim was looking on in dismay, which he quickly swallowed down and forced into bitter resentment, instead, when he caught Damian's mocking smile coming at him.</p><p>Dick and Babs hadn't noticed either Tim or Damian, because the couple was busy sniffing and crying, too, feeling like they had just witnessed a Mother's Day miracle.</p><p>Steph, whose hand was still linked with Jason's, was looking up at Bruce with newfound wonder. Her eyes drifted over to Alfred, who was silently watching the scene without much of an outward display of emotion, but his eyes looked pleased. And maybe a little proud.</p><p>"I love you," Bruce said quietly to Jason, his hand still on his boy's face. "I always will."</p><p>Jason's control cracked.</p><p>He leaned forward, dropping Steph's hand, and fell on Bruce in a giant hug, sniffing and crying against his shoulder as he hung onto his father. Bruce's arms came up and held him tight as he began murmuring soothing sounds into Jason's ear.</p><p>Alfred's face burst into an actual smile. In fact, the butler looked happier than Steph could ever recall seeing him as he beamed at father and son with genuine warmth and sunshine in his face.</p><p>Damian was looking curiously between his father and his brother, a tiny smile appearing on his face and some tension disappearing from his shoulders. He glanced up at Steph who returned his smile, blinking away her tears.</p><p>Dick and Babs, of course, were crying more than ever - Babs, at least, was restraining herself to sniffs and little tissue dabs at her eyes, but Dick was practically bawling, he was so happy and emotional.</p><p>So much so that he forgot for a minute about Tim's fraught relationship with Jason and hugged Red Robin's neck happily, wanting to share the emotions of this beautiful family moment with his younger brother. Because wasn't a moment of healing between two family members good for the whole family? Wouldn't Tim want to celebrate that, too?</p><p>Apparently not, because Tim was scowling and wriggling out from under Dick's arm, stepping well away from his older brother once he was free. Dick stared at Tim for a moment, bewildered, before he realized the issue and morphed into apologetic body language, his face crumbling into regret and an attempt at understanding.</p><p>Tim scoffed, rolled his eyes, and deliberately looked away, crossing his arms over his chest as he stayed out of range of Dick's huggy arms.</p><p>Damian, who had been sharply watching everything, began to giggle a little bit, but Steph leaned down to hush him.</p><p>"Be nice," she whispered in his ear. "We all need to try today," she said.</p><p>"Drake is not trying," Damian argued back in a whisper as Titus's tail thumped against the grass, the dog equally excited at the affection transpiring between Jason and Bruce.</p><p>"Doesn't matter," Steph quietly insisted. "We're better than him, right?" she said with a superior gleam in her eye which immediately caught Damian's attention.</p><p>"Indeed," he said, briskly nodding his head. "My thanks, Brown, for recalling me to the higher path where I belong."</p><p>"Of course," Steph said to him, very seriously. "We mustn't allow our lessers to drag us down," she whispered, getting a sharp nod back from Damian.</p><p>"Indeed we must not," the boy agreed, transforming his face into a schooled, bland expression and focusing his attention away from Timothy Drake and onto Titus, instead.</p><p>Tim was watching Steph somewhat curiously, she saw when she stood up, but he looked away as soon as he noticed her eyes on him.</p><p>Jason was coming to the end of his muffled sobs against Bruce's shirt when he mumbled into his father's ear, "I love you, too, Pops."</p><p>And then it was Bruce who was crying and wondering how he had let things with Jason go on for so long being so wrong, because standing here with him in the cemetery at Mama Wayne's grave, like they hadn't done together for years, it felt so easy to put things right.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Well, this story is certainly spiraling out of control in terms of length! (What's that, you say? All my stories do that? Hush, you!) </p><p>I'm.... not mad ;) Cause I love writing about my babies so much! And fixing this dysfunctional family up! They need help, dammit, and I'm going to give it to them.   </p><p>I wasn't sure at first about spending time in detail with each person's mom, but skipping some of the moms in favor of summarizing them didn't feel right... so I think I'm going to compromise by writing at least something detailed about everybody's mom (maybe even a full chapter, given the way this one went) - but we won't go into detail with each family member's questions, because then this story would turn into another freakin' longfic. </p><p>Cuz you see we only got through two questions here. So next chapter, I'll kind of quickly sum up the rest of what happened with the fam asking Bruce their questions about Bubbe, and then we'll move on to the next mom. </p><p>See ya soon!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Better to Have Loved and Not Lost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You guys, the Timmy angst just keeps growing and growing and I - *helpless noises* </p><p>*sobbing into my keyboard* It's a JaySteph WHAT CAN I DO </p><p>I AM SORRY TIMMY</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rest of the questions directed towards Bruce about Bubbe Wayne ended up being a little less emotional - the silliest thing she'd done, the bravest, her favorite food, her favorite animal, her favorite outfit - although Barbara's question had wrenched a lot of their hearts.</p><p>Not because of Bruce's answer, but because everyone knew why Babs had chosen her question.</p><p>"What was the most selfish thing that your mother ever did?"</p><p>Dick had barely listened to Bruce's reply as he clasped his hand tightly on his wife's shoulder, his chest reeling with almost as much pain as she was surely feeling.</p><p>Although Babs seemed, if anything, detached and withdrawn, resigned to the bitterness of the day and hardly seeming affected except for the blatant brutality of her question.</p><p>Because no one needed to ask Babs what the most selfish thing <em>her </em>mother had ever done was; Barbara Gordon, senior, had walked out on her family when Babs was just a kid, eschewing any further contact with her daughter.</p><p>Dick was so lost in thought and in his emotions that it took Babs reaching up and tugging on his hand before he realized that Bruce was speaking to him.</p><p>"Shall we go down to your mother's grave now, son?"</p><p>Dick started and nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his free hand. Bruce gave him a sympathetic smile before stepping forward to place a small stone on his mother's gravestone as the other family members laid out their bouquets.</p><p>"Where are your flowers for Bubbe, Father?" Damian asked him curiously as he placed his own small bunch of roses down, which he and Alfred had cut themselves that morning from Martha Wayne's own rose garden which Alfred still lovingly maintained.</p><p>Bruce gave him a little smile, his arms full of bouquets for the other mothers in the family.</p><p>"It's Jewish tradition to place a stone instead of flowers," he said.</p><p>"But I think Bubbe will love all the flowers, nonetheless," Bruce said warmly, rubbing his son's head. "Especially the ones that you picked for her," he said with a smile, which Damian actually returned.</p><p>"I will place a stone, too," Damian said, quickly scouring the ground for a suitable pebble. "Because I am her only blood grandson," he added as he looked around.</p><p>"Which makes me partially Jewish, Father, does it not?" Damian asked him, having selected an appropriate rock.</p><p>"Of course," Bruce said in surprise. "If you want to think of yourself that way, of course you can," he said. "I think Bubbe would be very pleased to know that her heritage means something to you."</p><p>Damian gave him a brief glance before solemnly placing his pebble onto his grandmother's grave.</p><p>"I do not know if it means anything to me or not," Damian said thoughtfully, "but it was important to Bubbe, so I should honor it on her behalf."</p><p>"That's a beautiful sentiment, son," Bruce said, getting choked up yet again.</p><p>"Come on, Titus," Damian said, rapidly switching gears. "I'll race you to jaddati's grave!"</p><p>The boy and his dog took off running across the cemetery, quickly surpassing Dick and Babs. The Batfamily had naturally outfitted Barbara's wheelchair with a massive amount of technology, which meant that she could move at quite a clip when she wanted to, but she was keeping a leisurely pace with Dick as he walked alongside her.</p><p>Tim was rather despondently trailing after them, not quite part of the group but not so far behind that Dick would bother him about it.</p><p>Alfred gave Bruce a small smile as he laid his own roses down onto Martha's grave.</p><p>"Today would have made your dear mother's heart glad," the butler said. "To finally have her whole family reunited."</p><p>"Except for Cass," Bruce murmured, but Alfred merely tutted.</p><p>"Miss Cassandra may at present be physically distant from us, but she has never kept herself far from our hearts, sir," Alfred said.</p><p>"Not as others in the family have done," he added under his breath as father and son watched Jason and Steph walking hand in hand along the cemetery paths a little ways in front of them.</p><p>"She is so good for him," Bruce said quietly with wonder and affection in his eyes as he watched the couple swinging their hands and smiling into each other's eyes every other second as they walked.</p><p>"Indeed," Alfred said with deep satisfaction. "As he is for her."</p><p>He sighed as he and Bruce began to follow the others to Mary Grayson's grave.</p><p>"I fear that Master Timothy was far less good for Miss Stephanie, towards the end," the butler said with more sadness in his voice than disapproval.</p><p>"The lad had been through so much," Alfred said. "But to break up with Miss Stephanie…" Alfred shook his head gravely.</p><p>"I think he regrets it," Bruce quietly agreed. "He can hardly stand to be around them. Dick told me that Tim didn't even want to come today, because Jason and Steph would be here."</p><p>Alfred hummed in sympathy for his grandson.</p><p>"We must lie in the beds that we make for ourselves," Alfred said, though. "He broke the poor girl's heart."</p><p>"It was my fault," Bruce mumbled.</p><p>"No, sir," Alfred said strongly, giving him a sharp look.</p><p>"Master Timothy is responsible for his own actions. It was not necessary to lash out at the girl for following your orders. And certainly not necessary to end their relationship over it. If he was angry at anyone, it should have been at you," Alfred said rather severely.</p><p>"Not that I am suggesting that you were deserving of his anger, either," Alfred said much more gently, reaching his hand up to pat Bruce's guilt-stricken face.</p><p>"You were trying to comfort the boy in the event of your untimely death. It was a heartfelt gesture that the lad should have received as such, whether or not he appreciated the deception. He might have rallied himself to see the good intention behind it."</p><p>"But for him to blame Miss Stephanie in such a despicable manner and then terminate their friendship as well as their romance..." Alfred sighed again, shaking his head in a bit of despair.</p><p>"He's made himself a lumpy bed," Bruce grunted, and Alfred nodded.</p><p>"Indeed. And I pity the boy, but how can one truly offer substantive assistance in such a circumstance?"</p><p>Dick had clearly made up his mind that the most effective way to help would be to smother Tim in hugs, which he began doling out again as soon as he, Babs, and Tim arrived at Mary Grayson's headstone, where Damian and Titus had been impatiently waiting.</p><p>Damian was regarding the hugfest curiously, but he didn't say a word or even smirk, and Babs felt an abundance of pride swell up in her heart for her little son who was growing up into such a mature boy.</p><p>She and Dick had despaired for Damian when they first met the abused and traumatized assassin. They'd panicked tenfold more when they adopted him after Bruce's supposed death and begun the arduous task of parenting the violently aggressive mini-murderer.</p><p>But they'd been patient and firm and loving and strict and here Damian was, clearly dying to mock Tim, but holding himself back from actually doing it, and Babs felt so happy and so grateful to see such solid evidence of Damian's ongoing redemption that she reached her arms out to him from her wheelchair.</p><p>"Come here and give me a hug," she smiled at him.</p><p>The corners of Damian's mouth turned up in the way that they had a habit of doing just for her, and he came over willingly to be squeezed, Titus coming, too, to lay his big head in Barbara's lap for ear scratches.</p><p>"I love you so much," Babs whispered in Damian's ear.</p><p>"I love you, too, Mama," Damian whispered back, and Babs thought that even if she and Dick did have a baby one day, she could not possibly love them any more than she loved Damian and the sweet feel of his little arms around her neck that were gently hugging her instead of choking her.</p><p>As he'd tried to do when they'd first adopted him.</p><p>Ah, good times.</p><p>The shocked look on her son's face when he'd discovered that a wheelchair bound Babs was still a badass who could take him down with very little trouble at all was almost worth getting paralyzed for.</p><p>"That'll teach you to misjudge someone with a disability," Babs had said smugly to the knocked-on-his-ass baby assassin who was giving her a blank look of disbelief from the floor.</p><p>Score one for dismantling negative stereotypes held by killer ninjas with an inflated sense of superiority, Babs had thought to herself with pride, almost able to see the frantic recomputing scrambling through Damian's brain behind his wide, twitching eyeballs.</p><p>Dick had walked through the room at that minute, immediately assessed the situation, and laughed unconcernedly as he continued to the kitchen.</p><p>"Guess you learned not to mess with your mama," Dick had called over his shoulder to Little D.</p><p>"She is not my mother," Damian had scowled.</p><p>But here he was, not two years later on Mother's Day, calling her Mama and telling her that he loved her and despite her angst over her own asshole-of-a-mother, Barbara's heart felt full to the brim with her son in her arms.</p><p>Jason and Steph smiled at her as they walked up and came upon Damian's rare display of affection - which, to be fair, wasn't so very rare at all anymore when the boy was with Dick and Babs.</p><p>It was a testament to the hell that she and her husband had walked through with him in order to gain his love and trust. And yeah, Babs rejoiced every time that Damian demonstrated greater ease in his interactions with the rest of the family… but that wasn't going to stop her from cherishing every moment of being singled out by her son.</p><p>Bruce and Alfred brought up the rear of the family as they joined the group assembled at Mary Grayson's grave where she was buried with her husband John, both killed at the same time when their trapeze wires were sabotaged by a mob boss exacting revenge on their circus's owner. They'd fallen to their deaths in front of a horrified young Dick who'd been seconds away from joining them in the air.</p><p>Losing a parent under any circumstances was hard… but Bruce knew better than anyone the added pain that came with seeing two identical death dates side by side on a tombstone.</p><p>Dick was finally releasing Tim from his avalanche of hugs, so Bruce stepped forward to hug his eldest, albeit with a knowing twinkle in his eye directed at the long-suffering Tim, which produced a relieved smile on Tim's face. He was so glad that Bruce understood.</p><p>Tim didn't want ten million hugs and extra attention today. He just wanted to be left alone. Wasn't it enough that he'd showed up? Why did he also have to suffer through Dick slathering attention on him as lavishly as Titus's tongue liked to do to Damian's face?</p><p>Dick hadn't been there for Tim when Bruce died, so why was he pretending to be here for him now?</p><p>The eldest Wayne son was getting pulled into a tender hug now by Bruce which he was, of course, weepily returning.</p><p>Tim sighed.</p><p>As his eyes slid away from the emotional father and son duo, he was startled to notice that Steph was looking at him with concerned eyes - as if she, too, understood, what he was going through.</p><p>Well, it was partly her fault what he was going through, wasn't it? Steph didn't have to date the man who'd tried to kill him!</p><p>Yeah, ok, so Tim had broken up with her - which… maybe… had been a mistake - and then he'd cut her out of his life, a move which had deposited a burden of guilt into his gut as heavy as a load of bricks - but - still!</p><p>Tim had never thought that Steph would move on so quickly - or at all! And of all the people in the world that there were to date, Steph had to get with Jason? Why Jason? It was like she wanted Tim to feel even worse about breaking up with her than he already did.</p><p>He'd wanted to call her after a few months of icing her out, but he'd been so busy trying to save Bruce - and then he'd done it - causing the Batfamily's fragile post-Bruce world that they'd so painfully constructed to shatter apart.</p><p>They'd all had to start over, but everything and everyone was different, now - and - and - Tim hadn't thought that it would matter if he waited a little while longer before reaching back out to Steph.</p><p>Hell, he'd figured that she'd need time to readjust to Bruce being back, too. Plus, Tim had been working with the Teen Titans since Bruce had been gone, so he needed to plan his transition back to Gotham, he couldn't just leave them in the lurch.</p><p>When Tim had finally come back to his hometown, he'd been welcomed back into his Robin role by Bruce with open arms, which had felt wonderful - but then Tim had been promptly punched in the emotional gut not two days later when Jason and Steph returned from a camping trip - which they'd taken <em>together </em>- and casually let it be known that they were dating.</p><p>And fucking.</p><p>And, fuck it all - engaged.</p><p>Tim knew he'd reacted like an ass, but how else could he have covered the noise of his heart breaking so that the demon-brat wouldn't notice? Not to mention the murderous bastard who'd had his hands and tongue all over Tim's girl.</p><p><em>His </em>girl. Always. Not Jason's. His.</p><p>Steph was Tim's. She always had been. He'd thought she always would be.</p><p>Deep in his heart of hearts, when Steph had hurt him so badly by setting him up on Bruce's final quest, Tim hadn't really meant to end things forever. He'd been devastated to learn that she'd lied to him and he'd felt overwhelmed and angry and fuck it, he'd wanted to punish Steph, to make her feel as much pain as her stupid stunt had put him through.</p><p>But Steph would always be there for him, Tim had thought. They were Tim and Steph. They'd be together forever. Nothing could ever really come between them.</p><p>Not even his breakdown and breakup and emotional overload and lashing out and rage and self-imposed isolation from the girl of his dreams.</p><p>They'd bounce back stronger than ever, Tim had told himself every time that he ignored the impulse to pick up the phone and call his girl.</p><p>Steph would understand. She always understood. If Tim needed to be selfish for once in his life, Steph wouldn't hold it against him.</p><p>He'd thought.</p><p>And now he died a little more every day and slept a little less than his usual not very much, knowing that every night Steph was sleeping in Jason's bed, getting fucked by Jason's cock, willingly giving Jason everything that Tim had never asked for, including her future.</p><p>The raging fire in Tim's chest where his heart used to be never went out, and to see Steph looking at him with such worried eyes, like she still cared - God, Tim was going to cry and he did not want to do that so he scowled at her instead, crossing his arms and looking away.</p><p>Jason inhaled on an angry hiss when he saw how Steph's shoulders fell at Tim's harsh glare. He pulled her into his arms, planting a tender kiss on her head as he cuddled her close.</p><p>"He's an ass," Jason whispered into her ear.</p><p>"I know," Steph mumbled back with tears in her eyes, "but he didn't used to be and it hurts so much."</p><p>"I know, baby," Jason murmured as he rubbed her back while taking advantage of Tim's turned head to throw Steph's ex a dirty look. Or twelve.</p><p>The guy didn't have to be such a prick, Jason thought with exasperation. Steph had never done anything wrong towards him and for him to become such a bastard to her - Jason growled quietly in frustration, causing Titus to perk his head up and whine happily in response to his fellow pack member as he wagged his tail.</p><p>"Titus is ready to begin, Father," Damian said, causing Bruce to release Dick from their long, teary-eyed hug.</p><p>"Well, then," Bruce said, wiping his eyes. "Let's get started. Ok, son?" he checked in with Dick, who nodded while making use of some tissues.</p><p>"Questions about Mary Grayson," Bruce said, smiling a little bit. "Who's first?"</p><p>"I will go first," Damian announced. "Baba, what was jaddati's favorite animal?"</p><p>"Let's see," Dick said, smiling a little bit at his tiny son who was lovingly petting Titus's head as they stood beside Babs.</p><p>"Mom really loved the horses that traveled with Haly's Circus for the Novikov family's trick riding act," Dick said. "We weren't the kind of circus that had wilder animals -"</p><p>" - which are treated abominably and horribly abused by circuses worldwide," Damian interrupted with a scowl.</p><p>" - Yes," Dick said, nodding somberly. "But our horses traveled in their own trailer and were able to be exercised daily and were well cared for on the road and in the circus, so they had a very happy, healthy life," Dick assured his animal-loving son.</p><p>"We never had a chance to have pets since we were always traveling," Dick said, "but Mom sure did love those horses. She'd visit with them every day and she even had her friend Dasha teach her how to groom them just because she enjoyed spending time with the horses so much. And visiting with Dasha, too, I think," Dick said with a nostalgic look in his eyes.</p><p>"Dasha was older than Mom, but not that old," Dick explained to Damian, "The Novikov kids were about ten years older than me. I think Mom enjoyed having a slightly more experienced mother to talk to about her parenting challenges and to get advice from."</p><p>Damian's eyes had started to shine at the thought of grooming horses and he turned to Steph and Jason who both began shaking their heads as unobtrusively but as firmly and decisively as they could.</p><p>Jason coughed as Tim's sharp eyes caught a hint of something suspicious in their head scratches and tiny jerks, so Steph quickly blurted out, "What was the silliest thing your mom ever did, Dick?"</p><p>"Hm," Dick said with a chuckle. "That's a tough one, because circus performers are nothing if not silly. There are a lot of memories to choose from," he laughed softly, but his eyes started to melt a little bit as memories of an entirely different life lived in an entirely different world came flooding back to him.</p><p>How had he become so normal? Dick thought to himself with some wonder. Having a fixed residence, a regular job, a minivan - well, the van was a necessity for Barbara's wheelchair, but having any vehicle at all was strange.</p><p>When was the last time he'd traveled outside of Gotham and Bludhaven? Or been inside a big top?</p><p>Babs was reaching out to squeeze his hand in sympathetic support and Dick grasped her fingers gratefully as he cleared his throat and tried to sort through the multitude of once happy memories that had become stained with heartache after his parents' deaths.</p><p>Why, <em>why</em>, couldn't they be here now? he thought to himself with frustration. It had been so long since he'd deliberately revisited the past, choosing instead to run from the memories on every holiday by focusing excessively on the present.</p><p>It was why he always brought so many friends to Alfred's Thanksgiving feasts, and bought so many gifts for everyone in the family at Christmas, and why he didn't celebrate goddamn Mother's Day, and Dick didn't even realize that he was crouched down on the ground beside Babs now, bawling pitifully as her fingers helplessly stroked his head in an attempt at comfort.</p><p>"Hey, hey, it's ok, son," he heard in his ear as Bruce's arms wrapped around him tight. "It's ok," Bruce kept murmuring. "Let it out. The tears have been dammed up for a long time."</p><p>Dick's only response was to sob harder as he desperately clutched his wife's hand and accepted Bruce's strong embrace.</p><p>Damian was shifting uncomfortably next to Steph and Jason, his eyes big and darting from his baba to the grass to Alfred and all over the cemetery. Titus whined a little bit and pressed himself closer into Damian's side, causing his master to steady his vision by focusing on his dog.</p><p>Damian swallowed and looked up at Jason and Stephanie, who were also staring at Dick with pity. Steph wiped some tears off of her cheek.</p><p>"You ok, habibi?" Jason murmured quietly to Damian, reaching out the hand that wasn't holding Steph's to gently nudge the boy's shoulder.</p><p>Red Bull looked up at him in dismay.</p><p>"I… do not know," he whispered. "What is the purpose of coming here if it produces such negative emotions?" he asked Jason in a worried voice.</p><p>Jason knelt down next to him in the grass.</p><p>"This year's going to be worse than most because we haven't come in so long," Jason said comfortingly. "Especially for me and Dick. When you shove all the memories and pain away as long as we have, it's like an explosion when they finally break loose. Which is why it's better to come every year," Jason said with a sigh.</p><p>"We will from now on," he promised his tiny sidekick as he reached out to ruffle his hair.</p><p>Steph was barely choking back the empathetic sobs that Dick's deep distress was calling up in her chest, but it was softer, happier tears that filled her eyes as she watched Jason's tender interactions with Damian.</p><p>This was the man she was going to marry and, assuming they could get pregnant, this was her baby daddy kneeling in front of her, being so damn sweet with his little brother that it made her heart overflow with love and gratitude for the way that her life was working out.</p><p>After so much pain, physical and emotional, and after so many years of feeling like she was cursed to the short end of the stick forever, Steph could hardly believe the wondrous turn that her life had taken only a few short months ago when Jason had decided to follow her to Batcow's barn and kiss her.</p><p>God, she loved Jason and despite being Mother's Day, Steph felt so happy all of a sudden that she could hardly breathe.</p><p>Jason happened to glance up at Steph as he stood up and the look on her face hit him harder than a meteor crashing into Earth, because Steph was looking at him like he was some kind of angel, and not of the variety that the Batfamily usually called to mind when they thought of Jason Todd.</p><p>He felt himself smiling back at her all loose and wobbly because the tight rubber band that usually kept his reactions strictly regulated when in the vicinity of the Batfamily had suddenly popped and gone flying and his mouth was left flailing around with as much control as a toddler's squiggly line in a coloring book.</p><p>Steph must have liked the picture it was drawing, though, because she was reaching up for his face and running her thumbs over his wavery, grinning lips and blinking away tears as she smiled at him brighter than the sun ever shone in Gotham.</p><p>"I love you so much," Steph whispered to him before she kissed him long and deep and sweet, standing on her tiptoes and leaning against his chest while she hung onto his neck for support.</p><p>Jason forgot about not pissing off the Replacement and not fighting on Mother's Day and even that his own mom's grave was the next one after Dick's that they'd be visiting, because his girl was kissing him like she couldn't possibly find anyone in the multiverse to love more.</p><p>Not even the Replacement.</p><p>Which did scratch at Jason's heart from time to time, knowing that he wasn't Steph's first choice. She would have married Tim if she could have. He knew that.</p><p>But Tim was standing right here and Steph was kissing <em>him</em>, Jason, in a way that said that staying with Tim would have been her second choice, after all, and a lesser choice and a mistake and God, Jason adored her more than he'd ever loved anyone or anything in his life.</p><p>Even his bike.</p><p>Or Shakespeare.</p><p>He sucked on her tongue as she worshiped him with it and hugged her up against his chest so tightly that he could feel her heart racing through their jackets as they stayed tangled up in each other's mouths.</p><p>Tim had been sorry when Dick had started to cry. Sure, Dick had abandoned him and Tim didn't trust him anymore, but they had been close once - better than close, brothers - and Tim had lost his mom, too, who he hadn't even been as close to as Dick had been to his mom, and, well, Tim felt bad for the older man when he'd started to sob.</p><p>Which conflicted with his current anger towards Dick, which made Tim feel all gross and out of sorts inside, everything a mess.</p><p>He was glad that Bruce had immediately moved to comfort Dick, though, and Damian wasn't being obscene or laughing or mocking his older brother, which Tim would have expected the little brat to do, but he found himself oddly glad that the runt wasn't.</p><p>Tim felt Alfred's cautiously concerned eyes on him so he looked over at the butler and gave him a tight smile.</p><p>Tim had loved Alfred so much once, and maybe still did a little bit against his will - because it was damn hard to resist the butler's constant mothering - but it hurt like hell that Alfred loved Jason so much more than not only Tim, but than everyone else in the family.</p><p>It would have been one thing, Tim thought, for Alfred to still love Jason <em>some</em> after his attempted murder of Tim. Like, a reasonable amount of love that took into consideration what the fuck Jason had done.</p><p>But for Jason to be Alfred's undisputed favorite?</p><p>What the hell, Tim thought bitterly. How a person who had almost beaten another member of the family to death could possibly be anyone's favorite after such an act, Tim did not know and could not accept.</p><p>He looked away from the butler only to see Jason kneeling down muttering something to the demon spawn while Dick continued to sob in the background, surrounded by Babs and Bruce.</p><p>Of course, Tim couldn't help his eyes going to Steph, who thankfully wasn't looking at him at the moment.</p><p>God, Steph was who Tim felt the most like crying over today. If only he hadn't cut her off. If only Jason would treat her like the jerk that Tim knew he was so that she'd break up with him. If only -</p><p>Tim's heart stopped in his chest.</p><p>Because Steph was giving Jason a look that Tim had never, in four years of dating her, ever seen on her face.</p><p>She - oh, God - and then - Tim wanted to turn away but he was trapped, horror struck, at the way that Steph was kissing Jason - and Tim and Steph had made out plenty when they were together, like the two horny teenagers that they were, but not like this - God, not like this - and - Tim turned away on a choked sob, feeling his shoulders start to shake as he stalked off, away from the Grayson gravestone, away from the BatBrat's surely scaldingly derisive gaze, away from the love of his life kissing another man like he was her everything and Tim was her nothing.</p><p>When he thought that he had stumbled a safe distance away from earshot, Tim let himself crumble to the ground behind a particularly tall monument as he fell apart, sobbing and silently screaming and pounding the ground as hot lava poured out of fresh cracks in the heart that he'd thought couldn't break anymore than it already had.</p><p>It felt like a long time before the vast reservoir of tears in his soul emptied but Tim felt like his heart's screams of agony would be haunting him for a lifetime and he didn't know how he could bear it.</p><p>He jumped slightly when the ground shifted beside him. Tim turned his head to see Alfred lowering himself down next to him while handing him a clean and pressed handkerchief. Which Tim accepted, but only because his face was a snotty, runny, soggy mess.</p><p>"Oh, Master Timothy," Alfred sighed, startling Tim by wrapping his arm around the boy's shoulders and tugging him into his side.</p><p>"My heart bleeds for you, my dear," Alfred said sadly. "It truly does. But I fear that any words of comfort I might attempt to offer would ring hollow."</p><p>Tim didn't answer, because what was there to say? He'd lost Steph once and thought it was forever, only it wasn't. Now he'd gone and lost her again, and this time? Steph really was lost forever, and it was Tim's own fault.</p><p>The universe had given him a second chance and he'd thrown it away. Like an idiot. A fool. A -</p><p>"My dear boy, calling yourself names will not make the situation any easier to bear," Alfred said.</p><p>Oh. He'd say that out loud?</p><p>"It's not like anything will make it easier," Tim muttered. "So I might as well tell myself the truth about what I am."</p><p>Alfred hummed in a way that said that he disagreed, but was too polite to say so.</p><p>"What?" Tim grumbled. "If you have something to say, just say it, Alfred," he said in a way that bordered on rude.</p><p>A way in which he once wouldn't have dreamed of talking to Alfred.</p><p>"You lost your way once, Master Timothy," Alfred said to him. "Pray do not lose it again."</p><p>Tim turned his head and stared at him.</p><p>"How can I possibly lose it again?" he said to Alfred. "Steph is gone."</p><p>"I was not referring to your relationship with Miss Stephanie," Alfred said.</p><p>Tim furrowed his brow.</p><p>"Your family, young sir," Alfred said, squeezing Tim's shoulders for extra emphasis. "It was your withdrawal from the family that led you down the path that ended with your termination of your romance."</p><p>"<em>My </em>withdrawal?" Tim said, dropping his jaw in shock. "What the fuck, Alfred?" he said, in his anger not bothering to censor his language.</p><p>"They left <em>me</em>," Tim growled. "Or did you forget Dick firing me from being Robin?"</p><p>"And when did he fire you from being his brother?" Alfred said. "That conversation, I do not recall."</p><p>Tim sucked in an angry breath.</p><p>"And when did Miss Barbara fire you from being her brother-in-law? Or when did I fire you from being my grandson?" Alfred persisted.</p><p>"When you picked Jason over me," Tim snapped.</p><p>Alfred's eyebrows went up.</p><p>"A question, Master Timothy," the butler said. "How deep was your joy when Miss Stephanie returned from the dead?"</p><p>Tim sputtered.</p><p>"You're changing the subject," he said, wiping away his still treacherous tears.</p><p>"I am illustrating a point," said Alfred. "Answer the question, if you please."</p><p>And even though there was no good reason to, Tim mumbled out, "I was ecstatic. Happier than I'd ever been in my life."</p><p>"Indeed," Alfred said, nodding. "And yet, you chose to forget that joy and let her go."</p><p>"I didn't mean to," Tim said, his voice cracking under the weight of Alfred's accusations. "I was so angry," he said helplessly.</p><p>"And so well versed by that point in walking away from loved ones whom you felt had wronged you," Alfred said and Tim's lip wobbled.</p><p>Breaking up with Steph had nothing to do with being angry at Dick and Alfred and Babs. It didn't. It couldn't.</p><p>But…</p><p>"Imagine my joy when my grandson returned to me from the dead," Alfred said. "More monster than man at first, yes," he said somberly. "I have never forgotten what he did to you, Master Timothy. But I chose not to walk away from the one that I loved and once lost."</p><p>"Do I love him more than the rest of you? Yes. As you love Miss Stephanie more," Alfred said.</p><p>"But I lost her," Tim whispered.</p><p>"Yes," Alfred said. "And I fear what you may lose next if you continue to separate yourself from your family."</p><p>"What else is there left to lose?" Tim said bitterly.</p><p>"Your future," Alfred said gravely.</p><p>Back at the Grayson headstone, Dick's sobs were finally coming under control and he was wiping his face with tissues and letting Bruce and Babs fuss over him as he slowly recovered.</p><p>He looked over and caught Damian's still very worried eyes.</p><p>"I'm ok, Damian," Dick said with a shaky smile as he stood up.</p><p>"You appeared most unwell," Damian said anxiously.</p><p>"I was," Dick said, "but I needed to let it out. And I'm better now," he said, bending down to pull Damian into a tight hug.</p><p>"It was good to remember," Dick said to him. "Even though it hurt. I… I feel closer to my mom now than I have in years," he admitted softly.</p><p>"Thank you, Jason," Dick said, looking up at his younger brother who was no longer kissing Steph except on the top of her head, but still had her wrapped up in his arms.</p><p>"Thank you for making us do this," Dick said to him. "I needed it."</p><p>"I need it, too," Jason said with a wry smile. "And don't worry, big brother. I'm going to be just as much of a mess next when it's my turn."</p><p>Dick smiled at him before looking back at his son, who had yet to protest Dick's ongoing hug.</p><p>"Mom would have loved you so much, Damian," he said and the boy's face lit up.</p><p>"Really?" he asked Dick.</p><p>"For sure," Dick said. "She would have been so excited to have a grandson," he said. "And she would've had you up on the trapeze <em>and </em>on top of the horses doing tricks."</p><p>Damian beamed.</p><p>"I would have found that most enjoyable," he said. "In fact," he said, raising his voice and looking over to Bruce, who was hugging Babs and smiling over at Dick and Damian, "I would like very much to obtain some trick ponies, Father," Damian said.</p><p>"So that I might learn to become a trick rider."</p><p>"Notice he said obtain," Steph murmured under her breath to Jason. "Not purchase."</p><p>"So long as he obtains them with someone other than us," Jason muttered back. "We still have pigs to obtain."</p><p>"And sheep," Steph reminded him. "And a new barn," she giggled.</p><p>Bruce was hemming and hawing his way to a 'no' about the ponies when Alfred and Tim came walking back over to the group.</p><p>"Oh, Tim," Bruce said with relief, quickly escaping from Damian's sternly demanding gaze.</p><p>"You all right, son?" Bruce asked Tim with some concern, noting his tear-stained face.</p><p>"Not really," Tim mumbled.</p><p>Bruce pulled him into a tight hug and rubbed his back for a minute.</p><p>"I know today is extra hard for you," Bruce said quietly, although he had, of course, completely missed Steph and Jason's passionate interlude while he was caretaking Dick, so he had no idea just exactly how hard the day was becoming, Tim thought to himself.</p><p>Still, Bruce cared, and, as always, his love was a balm on Tim's aching soul.</p><p>"I'm proud of you for being here," Bruce was saying, and Tim couldn't answer him, because if Alfred hadn't firmly walked him back over to the family, Tim would have snuck off and skipped the rest of Mother's Day.</p><p>But he hugged Bruce back a little tighter, anyway.</p><p>"You ready to continue?" Bruce asked him and Tim wasn't, but he nodded.</p><p>"Dick?" Bruce said, checking in with his oldest.</p><p>"Yes," Dick said, determinedly wiping his nose and finding a smile. "The silliest thing my mom ever did…"</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*sniff* </p><p>well, see you next chapter... I.. do not know where the angst may take us. </p><p>I mean I have an outline but it wasn't THIS angsty and we are still following it in terms of plot. </p><p>I just, gah what have I done. .. </p><p>TIMMY WHAT HAVE YOU DONE</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Grass Is Always Greener</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Trigger warnings - references to child abuse and spousal abuse and a passing, barely there implied reference to childhood sexual abuse.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dick resolutely made it through the rest of the questions about his mom without breaking down, although there had definitely been tears in his eyes that even spilled onto his cheeks from time to time.</p><p>But he had rallied himself to get through his silliest memory of his mom (a memorable Halloween costume and trapeze performance as Ringmaster Haly, where she flew through the air in mustache, tuxedo tails, and bowtie with pompous grandiosity and magnificent hand flourishes) and Dick had even teased Alfred over his question about which favorite dish of his mom's he'd be cooking for the day's brunch by pretending at first that it was Fruity Pebbles.</p><p>Which may have caused the old butler to harumph and warn Master Dick that unless the man was preparing his mother's <em>second </em>favorite dish for brunch, he would be going hungry that day.</p><p>Steph had giggled along with Jason and Bruce, since Jason had filled her in beforehand on the reference, and Tim felt the black hole of emptiness tug even more morsels of his heart away into the ever-increasing void of his soul at the fact that it was Jason, and not him, who now had the privilege of sharing inside jokes with Steph.</p><p>Tim felt Alfred's thoughtfully concerned eyes on him as he rubbed his nose, but the elderly man thankfully left him alone about it.</p><p>As the family made their way to Catherine Todd's grave, with Dick looking worn out but cleansed from his inner demons as he walked hand in hand with Damian and Babs who were slowly trailing behind Jason and Stephanie, Jason wondered whether he'd cry over his mom as hard as his older brother had cried over Mary.</p><p>Jason had already gotten one round of hardcore bawling out on Bruce's shoulder, after all, when his Pops had told him that he loved him. Which wasn't so uncommon a feat for Bruce these days - he had been trying harder with all of them since getting stuck in the past for so long - but Bruce had said his 'I love you' to Jason this time like he meant it unconditionally.</p><p>That … was a lot to take in.</p><p>Because honestly? Jason had never been sure, since coming back from the dead, how Bruce really felt about him.</p><p>His Pops had been so fucking angry with him at first. And, to be fair, Jason had provoked Bruce - badly - by secretly becoming Red Hood instead of dropping by the manor first to mention that he and Jesus now had something in common.</p><p>And, well, given the number of bloodied, dead bodies - and heads - that Jason had left behind him in a grisly trail during his initial reign as Red Hood, Bruce had been bound to get a little mad. (Which, ok, may have been Jason's goal. Bruce hadn't killed the Joker, dammit! Serving up some severed heads to Pops was totally fair payback in Jason's eyes.)</p><p>And that didn't even count what Jason had done to the Replacement at Titans Tower before heading to Gotham.</p><p>That, Jason did feel guilty over. He hadn't meant to beat the kid at all, and certainly not to almost kill him. The Pit rage had been so strong, and seeing someone in the Robin costume had been so fucking unexpected, and the grief and anger had welled up and overflowed in a green haze of violence that Jason didn't snap out of until he'd fought the other Titans off and escaped into the night, his hands covered in blood.</p><p>So, yeah. Bruce had a lot to hate about Jason 2.0.</p><p>And even though most of it - or maybe all of it - was Jason's fault, it still hurt that Bruce didn't love him anymore like he used to.</p><p>All because he killed people. Barely people. Assholes who deserved it.</p><p>But it wasn't like Jason had made his first kill in his right mind or by his own choice. Talia had forced him into it when he was mostly a zombie. And once he'd started killing, well… stopping had seemed kind of pointless.</p><p>Bruce's precious line had been crossed with blood so many times before Jason had even made it back to Gotham that Jason didn't see the point of pretending to be something he wasn't. It wasn't like Bruce would still love him, anyway, once he'd learned what Jason had done, so why not do it more, Jason had reasoned.</p><p>Especially if he could take out the kind of pieces of shit who Bruce was ill-equipped to deal with, hampered as Batman was by the legal system for any non-criminally insane villains, which Gotham had even more of than Rogues.</p><p>It was sometime after the Joker's death, after Jason and Bruce had kind of made up and started to reconnect, that Bruce had first managed to choke out an 'I love you' to Jason.</p><p>And it wasn't that Jason didn't believe him. He knew that Bruce still loved him, if not for the man he was today than at least for the kid who he'd once been.</p><p>But it had always been clear to Jason that Bruce's love for him was tainted by an overriding sense of disgust for Red Hood and his methods.</p><p>Except at Martha's grave just now, Pops had answered Steph's question about killing for justice versus vengeance with so much emotion, and the way he'd held Jason's face afterwards when he said he loved him - ok, well, dammit, Jason found himself blinking more tears away as he walked towards his mom's grave with Steph's hand gently clasped in his.</p><p>Fuck. He probably was going to bawl over his mom as badly as Dick had after all. But that's what he came here for, so he might as well do the day right, Jason figured.</p><p>Catherine Todd's headstone was plain and simple, like her casket and funeral had been, but it was resting nonetheless in the elegantly gothic Gotham Cemetery despite the absolute poverty that she and Jason had lived in and that Catherine had died in.</p><p>Martha Wayne's charitable nature had long ago ensured that every Gothamite would have a proper resting place and burial in the manner of their choice, no matter their means or lack thereof.</p><p>Little Jason had been terrified at first that the city would automatically cremate Catherine, which would have been the cheapest option for disposing of a citizen who lacked both funds and a billable next of kin.</p><p>He couldn't stand the thought of his mom's body disintegrating into nothingness, not when he had just lost everything good and stable in his life, which wasn't much to begin with.</p><p>Jason wanted so badly for his mom to rest in a coffin and be buried in grass that his little chest had burned with angst as he sat in the parish priest's office with the nun and the Father as they had prepared to go over the burial details with him, the social worker assigned to his case sitting beside him.</p><p>It wouldn't be the same if his mom was cremated, young Jason had thought fiercely. It wouldn't. She'd really be gone, then, and Jason didn't think that he could bear that.</p><p>He wasn't an idiot, though. He knew that burials cost money. How much money, he didn't know, but everything in life and death had a cost. That was the first lesson that a Narrows kid learned.</p><p>Jason knew how to earn money, though, and maybe they'd let him set up a payment plan...</p><p>If only he could get his mom buried in the grass at the cemetery, then he'd know for sure that she was finally happy.</p><p>There wasn't any grass in the Narrows.</p><p>The public housing and apartments didn't have yards at all, just endless parking lots and sidewalks and concrete. Row houses like the one Steph had grown up in were supposed to have lawns at some point, Jason guessed, but all Jason had ever seen in the tiny strips of non-pavement was mud and broken glass and old needles and rusty car parts and trash.</p><p>Barely even one or two straggly weeds ever dared to poke their heads up in those sorry excuses for yards.</p><p>So to a young, grieving Jason, the green, plush and grassy turf of the cemetery had seemed like the highest measure of wealth imaginable. It was the Heaven that his mom deserved, he had stubbornly thought, and he would do whatever it took to make sure his mom got to spend her death there.</p><p>His tight chest had exhaled in a whoosh when the nun had told him that the Martha Wayne Burial Fund existed exactly for cases like his mom's.</p><p>"You can either have her cremated or buried, Jason," Sister Abigail had said kindly. "If you choose cremation, her ashes will be interred in the memorial wall that lines the cemetery."</p><p>She pointed to the photo on the glossy brochure of the tiny locked vaults that looked like endless rows of apartment mailboxes all shoved together, bordered not even by grass but by the cement cemetery sidewalk.</p><p>Jason shivered.</p><p>"If you'd like to have her buried," Sister Abigail continued, "it will be a simple casket and a flat headstone with just her name and dates of life."</p><p>"Will she be buried in the grass?" Jason had asked urgently, his fingers tightly gripping the ratty edge of his stained t-shirt as he looked at the picture of the polished wooden casket and engraved granite marker which were both nicer than any of the furniture that he and his mom had back in the apartment that his social worker hadn't let Jason back into since Catherine's death two days before.</p><p>"Yes," Father Thomas had answered, seeming a little surprised at his question. "Yes, the ground will be a little muddy at first because they have to dig the hole for the casket, but the cemetery lays turf back over it and the grass grows back."</p><p>"That's what I want," Jason had said without hesitation, relief slumping through his shoulders.</p><p>Bruce had asked him on the first Mother's Day that they'd spent together, so many years ago at this point, if he'd like a fancier headstone for his mom or an added sculpture or monument, but Jason had refused.</p><p>"Your mom paid for this one," Jason had said, running his little fingers along his mom's carved name with a caressing familiarity. "That makes it special just the way it is."</p><p>Which may have made Bruce choke up and hug his newly adopted son extra tightly, and may have made Dick and Alfred get sniffly, too.</p><p>Jason's eyes got soft as he and Steph stepped up to Catherine's rectangular grave marker.</p><p>He let out a long but affectionate sigh as he knelt down and began tracing the grooved letters of his mom's name like he always did when he came to see her. Which hadn't been for awhile, although he had in fact popped by occasionally since coming back from the dead.</p><p>Never on a holiday, and never when sober, but every so often Jason found himself too weak to resist the perpetual tugging on his heart.</p><p>So, he would trudge over to the cemetery in the wee hours of the night, climbing the fence and stumbling around by moonlight until he made it to his mom's grave, where he'd curl up on the grass and ramble away for hours, telling his mom all about his life and hoping she'd be proud of him for doing what he could to protect their home, Crime Alley, to make it safer for other kids like he'd been.</p><p>He always crept home just before dawn, exhausted and hungover and drained, but feeling slightly comforted nonetheless.</p><p>This was the first time that Jason had come to see his mom since dating Steph, though, and he realized that he was excited for his mom to get to meet his girl, even if the introductions were going to be a little one-sided.</p><p>Steph was rubbing his shoulders as he knelt in the grass and Jason looked up and tugged her down to kneel beside him while they waited for the rest of the family to assemble.</p><p>"Hey, Mama," Jason said softly as he held Steph's hand in his and traced her fingers over Catherine's name, too.</p><p>"This is Steph," Jason said.</p><p>And yeah, he was starting to feel bombarded with emotions, but he couldn't help the sweet smile that talking to his mom always pulled out of him.</p><p>"We're gonna get married and give you grandkids one day," Jason said as he and Steph moved their hands over the grave together.</p><p>Steph sniffed and smiled and began to cry as she turned to press her forehead into Jason's shoulder, because he was so damn cute and she'd had no idea that he talked to his mom's grave, or even that he came to visit her sometimes, and her heart was breaking for the little boy inside her fiancé who'd lost his mom way too soon.</p><p>"Hi Mama Catherine," Steph whispered to the tombstone. "I really love your son," she smiled and then Jason was crying, too, and slipping his arm around Steph's waist to tug her close as they looked at Catherine's name with watery eyes.</p><p>Tim really, really hated Jason. Even more than he hated Damian, and that was saying a lot.</p><p>So it was quite a shock when he came up to Catherine Todd's grave and saw Jason looking soft and vulnerable and sad, and Tim detested the flood of pity that tried to break through the dam of resentment in his heart.</p><p>So what if Jason was sad? He - he had stolen Steph. Sort of.</p><p>He had her and Tim didn't and that was the point.</p><p>Jason wasn't supposed to be human, dammit. Red Hood was a murderous bastard who flaunted Bruce's rules and got away with it.</p><p>A total asshole.</p><p>So why did Tim suddenly want to feel bad for the guy?</p><p>And, even worse, why could Tim not help but see how perfectly united Jason and Steph looked as they held each other and cried over Catherine's gravestone.</p><p>They - they looked like they belonged together. Despite the arguments that Tim's heart was making to the contrary.</p><p>Fuck it, Tim did not know what he was going to do, and then he was crying again and he thought it was Alfred pulling him into a hug from behind, but it was Bruce, turning Tim around into his chest and hugging him close like he'd done after they thought Steph had died, and when Tim's mom had died, and after his dad had died, and when Conner had died.</p><p>And Tim just sobbed, because life wasn't fair and since it was never going to be, what was the point? He'd lost the love of his life and he'd lost his best friend and he was cursed to feel the acuteness of his heartbreak every damn time his family got together from now on, because of stupid fucking Jason and Steph.</p><p>Said couple had turned around in dismay when Tim started sobbing.</p><p>Which Tim, fortunately, didn't notice, as preoccupied as he was with crying, not to mention that Bruce had also delicately turned Tim's back to Steph when he'd pulled his son into the hug.</p><p>Steph sighed with something between frustration and pity while Jason ground his teeth. Alfred caught their eyes and gave them a rueful glance of understanding.</p><p>"The Replacement's got a lot of nerve to cry like that when he's the one who iced you out and broke up with you," Jason muttered underneath his breath.</p><p>"I know," Steph agreed quietly, lifting her pained eyes up to Jason's disgusted ones as Babs and Dick and Damian and Titus joined the group and silently assessed the situation.</p><p>"I feel bad for him," Steph whispered to Jason, "but at the same time, I cried a lot harder than that for a lot longer when he dumped me," she said with some bitterness.</p><p>"He hasn't talked to me for seven months now," Steph continued on with her mouth close to Jason's ear.</p><p>"Seven <em>months</em>, Jason!" she said. "It's kind of convenient for him to only regret leaving me when I started dating someone else," Steph growled and Jason grunted in agreement.</p><p>Bruce, thankfully, was trying to contain Tim's sobs with whispered encouragement in his son's ear, and Tim appeared to be making efforts to pull himself together, but that didn't stop Jason from letting out a long, silent sigh and rolling his eyes behind the Replacement's back, to Damian's great, albeit equally stealthy, glee.</p><p>It was time to talk about Catherine Todd, after all. Did Tim really have to hijack the proceedings? Jason grumbled in his head.</p><p>Steph's ex was quieting down now, however, and making copious use of the handkerchief that Alfred had apparently insisted that he keep, and Tim finally turned to face his family.</p><p>If one could call it facing them, when his face was firmly directed towards the ground.</p><p>"Sorry," the Replacement muttered, though, in a semi-audible voice, so that was something, Jason begrudgingly supposed.</p><p>Maybe the prick was trying. Hell, Jason already knew that the guy was an idiot for letting go of Steph, so maybe the Replacement couldn't help being so fucked up.</p><p>But still.</p><p>The jealousy and self-pity oozing from Timothy Drake was definitely starting to piss Jason off.</p><p>But Steph was tugging on his hand and as he turned his head towards her, she lifted up her other hand to caress his cheek.</p><p>"Let's get started," she said with a tender smile, pushing the proceedings back on track without a spare glace for Tim.</p><p>"Who has the first question for Jason?" Steph asked, turning to look around at the ring of wet eyes that were filled with sympathy, but also with gratitude, because Jason had brought the family back together, which felt like a Mother's Day Miracle to most of them.</p><p>Except to Tim, of course.</p><p>But he stunned the family by uttering the first question.</p><p>"What was your mom's favorite outfit?" Tim mumbled, not really making eye contact with Jason.</p><p>Better to ask first and get it over with, Tim figured, his guilty conscience whispering that he didn't deserve the proud shoulder squeeze that Bruce was giving him or the approving pats on his back from Alfred.</p><p>"Um, her favorite outfit," Jason repeated, surprise evident in his voice that Tim had spoken up first.</p><p>"She had this pink dress that she really liked," Jason said, directing his eyes down so that he was mostly talking to Steph, who was listening raptly.</p><p>"It was lacy," Jason said, struggling to find the words to describe it. "Like the whole thing was lace," he said.</p><p>"Short or long sleeves?" Steph smiled, helping her man out.</p><p>"Uh, straps at the top," Jason said, smiling back at her.</p><p>"Long or short?" Babs asked, with a gentle smile on her face too, jumping in as the only other woman present.</p><p>"Knee lengthish," Jason said after a second of reminiscing.</p><p>"When would she wear it?" Steph asked him, trailing the fingers that weren't holding his hand lightly over his arm.</p><p>"For her birthday," Jason sighed. "We didn't usually go out anywhere, 'cause, you know, we were broke," he said. "But me and her would bake her a cake together at home every year, and then she'd put the dress on when it was ready so we could light the candles and sing."</p><p>"She'd wear it for my birthday, too," Jason added. "And…" his face got sour.</p><p>"Well," he said shortly, rubbing his head and cutting himself off as Steph looked up at him in concern.</p><p>Bruce's eyes got troubled as he watched Jason struggle with whether or not to share his memory and he slipped away from Tim's side to move to Jason's, instead.</p><p>"It's ok, son," Bruce murmured, rubbing Jason's back. "You don't have to share it if you don't want to."</p><p>Dick, too, was looking on with sad eyes, as of course Babs and Alfred were as well, all of them aware that Jason's abusive past was bubbling up. Even Damian was frowning as he regarded his older brother, having grown sensitive enough over two years of living with Dick to realize that something was wrong.</p><p>Titus thumped his tail in concern and trotted over to Jason to nudge his nose up under Jason's hand in comfort.</p><p>"Oh," Jason said, looking down. "Hi, Titus," he said with a sheepish grin, gratefully petting the dog's head and drawing enough strength from his fellow Batcow-brigand to center himself.</p><p>Tim looked bored on the outside, but on the inside, his mind was retreating within itself as fast as it could, desperate to flee from any sense of pity for Jason Todd.</p><p>Because Jason Todd did not deserve pity.</p><p>And yet -</p><p>"The thing is," Jason said, clearing his throat. "Well. You know my dad Willis was abusive," he muttered, rubbing his hand over his jaw while Steph gripped his fingers tight and tears shone in Dick's eyes.</p><p>Alfred quietly tutted while Babs, who looked especially distressed, drew Damian into her arms as if to console herself that her own little one was presently safe.</p><p>"So, mom would put the dress on for Willis's birthday, too, if he was ever home for it," Jason was continuing. "'Cause she'd still bake him a cake and shit, even though he was an asshole," Jason mumbled.</p><p>"And this one year he'd been drinking - well, he was always drinking -" Jason sighed as Bruce massaged his son's shoulders in support, "and anyway, Willis hit my mom and I remember her falling down in her favorite dress," Jason finished in a whisper.</p><p>And screaming and crying and bleeding and bruised and begging Jason to go outside and play where it was safe - that was a joke, that he was safer outside in Crime Alley than in his own apartment - Jason could have added all of that to his response, but he didn't.</p><p>He'd tell Steph those parts later, he decided.</p><p>Bruce was sniffing back tears as he let go of Jason's shoulders to give him a side hug instead.</p><p>"Thank you for sharing that with us," Bruce said softly. "We're here to remember the good and the bad," he said and Jason nodded, clearing his throat and meeting Steph's eyes to soak in the loving support that he always found there.</p><p>"Are you ready for the next question?" Bruce asked him but Jason shook his head.</p><p>"No," he said. "I'm going to answer for Sheila, too," he said determinedly.</p><p>"Oh, Jason," Steph breathed out, looking like she wasn't sure if that was brave or foolhardy.</p><p>"It's ok," Jason said in a more confident voice, first to Steph, but then repeating it as his eyes circled to Dick and Babs, and Alfred and Bruce, glossed over Tim, and came to land on little D.</p><p>"I think we should each answer about all of our moms today," Jason said in a steady voice. "Whether they're alive or dead or stone cold bitches."</p><p>Damian's eyes looked startled at first and a little scared at the thought of answering questions about Talia, but then his youngest brother resolutely nodded his head, meeting his ahki's gaze unwaveringly.</p><p>Jason flicked his eyes over to Babs, who looked like she had forgotten how to breathe. He held her gaze for a long minute, before she finally glanced at the back of Damian's head and nodded, too, her features softening.</p><p>Jason looked down at Steph, who, as he figured she would be, was already smiling in agreement.</p><p>"Yes," Steph said. "It'll suck for some of us," she said, also turning to Damian and then Babs, "but I think we should do it," she said bravely.</p><p>"Misery does love company," Babs said dryly, making the family chuckle.</p><p>"So, Sheila," Jason sighed. "I can't say I knew her well enough to know her favorite outfit, so we'll go with the one she was wearing when she betrayed me and then got double-crossed herself," he groaned sarcastically, rolling his eyes a little bit.</p><p>"Cause that outfit is sure as hell imprinted on my memory," Jason grumbled.</p><p>Tim was half-tuned out, but Jason's description of Sheila's death garb, as well his responses to the other family member's questions, were seeping into his brain with the filtered weakness of boiling water strained over loose tea leaves.</p><p>Why did Jason have to have such a shit-awful life, Tim thought disconsolately to himself. He didn't like hearing all of these stories that illustrated how very much darker Jason's life had been than his own.</p><p>Because almost every question that Jason answered had a sad and depressing anecdote attached to it. Dick and Bruce's memories had been mostly happy, dammit. Bruce and Dick had only cried a lot because the happy times with their moms were over.</p><p>But Jason… God, he was talking about his mom's cancer now, and Tim tried to slip even further into his mental safe space.</p><p>When would this day end? Tim thought to himself.</p><p>Apparently, not yet, because Tim was startled back to reality by Bruce's hand on his arm.</p><p>"Son?" Bruce said gently.</p><p>"Yes?" Tim said guardedly.</p><p>"We're ready to go to your mom's grave now," Bruce said.</p><p>Oh, fuck.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading! Sorry for the slow updates, but omg angst apparently takes me a thousand times longer to write than fluff and smut and humor. I've been working steadily on it, but ... well, here it finally is.</p><p>No telling when the next chapter will be out, but I will be working regularly on it, rest assured. One of my longfics is wrapping up soonish, which will give me added time to work on this story, too.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Eyes That Still Can Weep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Surprise! An update! Happy New Year's, everybody!</p><p> I was planning to finish Red Knight first and then get back to this one, but it's been so long since I updated it and hey it's a new year, so here's a new chapter. Ch. 50 of Red Knight is in progress and should be coming out next, but I'm hoping to keep Mother's Day moving along again, too. A Light in the Dark will update again once Red Knight finishes and my plate is a bit more cleared. Fate keeps updating randomly. So far it's still in the easier chapters - fingers crossed we stay that way for awhile, because man, once these longfics get to a certain point, the chapters fight me! It's nice to have one longfic where each chapter isn't like pulling teeth. Enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tim stared at his mother's grave, his heart beating in his ears.</p><p>The only time he'd been here since the day they'd laid his mom in the ground had been for his father's interment, so his memories were skewed with temporary pavilion tents flapping in the breeze, and holes dug in the ground, and rows of flimsy blue plastic chairs filled with carefully perched Gotham socialites, none of whom he knew personally, and the pastor of a church Tim had never gone to droning on about a woman he hadn't known.</p><p>Not that Tim had known his mom much better than the minister had.</p><p>But now it was Tim's turn to answer questions about his mom, and he'd been so preoccupied with Jason and Steph all morning that he was only just realizing how much he didn't want to face how shallow his answers would be. What was the point, anyway, of reminding him how terrible his relationship with his mom had been? Jason could badger the others all he wanted into talking about their shitty moms, but Tim's mom wasn't exactly shitty and she definitely wasn't great.</p><p>She just <em>wasn't. </em>Wasn't there. Wasn't involved. Wasn't interested.</p><p>Wasn't here now.</p><p>Tim sighed as Bruce came up beside him and draped his arm around his shoulders while Tim stared at the unfamiliar looking headstone in the midst of an equally unrecognizable neat, grassy row of cemetery, with nary a chair or mud pile or flapping tent sleeve in sight.</p><p>"Shall we begin?" Bruce asked, and Tim nodded.</p><p>The sooner they started, the sooner he'd be done, after all. Tim didn't want to look at his family members, but his upbringing won out over his discomfort, and Tim found himself nervously glancing around the circle - at a very sympathetic Dick, giving him big puppy eyes next to Babs, whose eyes looked about as dead as Tim felt today; Damian, whose face was as bland and eyes as vacant as Brucie-at-a-party; Alfred, who was smiling at Tim encouragingly; and finally, horribly, Jason and Steph, whose arms were wrapped around each other's waists with Jason's head turned into the side of Steph's face for support, like it was a pillow, with his eyes half-shut.</p><p>Jason looked pretty beat after his Q-and-A, Tim couldn't help but admit with a twinge of unwelcome feeling that he hastily beat down. He didn't want to feel sorry for Jason. He wouldn't. He wasn't going to.</p><p>So there.</p><p>Steph, though, Steph wasn't even bothering to make eye contact with Tim anymore, Tim noticed with a much larger twinge of much more feeling, and God, did that hurt. Now Steph was the one staring at the ground, ignoring Tim as resolutely as he'd determinedly glared at her and silently snarked at Jason all morning.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>Why did that make him feel so guilty? And yet so abandoned, all over again? Even if a tiny voice in Tim's brain was whispering that maybe it was his fault, maybe if he'd smiled at Steph earlier, or even not scowled when she smiled at him, then maybe Steph would be supporting him now when it was Tim's turn to talk about the mother that he didn't want to think about but still missed like crazy.</p><p>Not that missing Janet was anything new, really. Tim had been missing his mom his whole life. That was the problem, wasn't it?</p><p>"I'll ask the first question," Babs said, and Tim looked at her in relief, a little surprised to see understanding laced through Babs' expression of pity. "What was the most selfish thing your mother ever did?" Babs said, and Tim didn't think that it was his imagination that Babs' voice had taken on a slightly gentler tone just for him.</p><p>As angry as Tim was at Babs, at all of them, he was grateful that the easiest question to answer about his mom was the one that he got to start with.</p><p>"Well," Tim said in a voice rusty from all of his earlier crying.</p><p>He paused to clear his throat.</p><p>"I mean…" he trailed off for a minute. "She was always gone," Tim said simply. "I don't know if I can pick one specifically selfish thing she did over and above the fact that she was just never there, never home, always traveling with my dad, not even getting me a nanny or a reliable daily housekeeper or anything," he said quietly.</p><p>Alfred tutted in distress, even though he and the whole family were well aware of Tim's history at this point, but it twisted Tim's heart up in ways that he didn't care for to hear his butler-slash-grandfather's pained sounds of empathy for what he'd gone through as a child, unbeknownst to his neighbors the Waynes. Because where had Alfred been for the more recent pain that he <em>did </em>know about?</p><p>Alfred said Tim had been the one who ran from the family, who withdrew, but - but - a huge sigh escaped Tim's chest as his head flopped down, exhausted from his inner struggles. Bruce's arm gripped his shoulders a little tighter and Tim felt a gentle kiss pressed into his hair.</p><p>"What was the bravest thing your mother ever did?" Bruce asked, rightly sensing that Tim didn't want to expand on his first answer.</p><p>So what if Bruce and Dick and Jason had rambled on and on about their moms, and cried a lot in between, Tim thought grumpily. Tim didn't even want to be here today, but here he was, and he was even answering the stupid questions about stupid memories that made him feel stupid feelings that he didn't want to feel, and if Tim wanted to be succinct in his answers, then he was damn well going to be. He was participating, and that was all his family was going to get out of him today - the bare minimum.</p><p>"Um," Tim said, looking up as he sifted through the few things he knew about his mother. "My mom rode on a camel once in Egypt," he said finally. "She actually called me that night from the hotel to tell me about it, and she said how scared she was and she sounded really proud of herself," he said, finding an odd lump creeping its way into his throat as he spoke.</p><p>His mom had sounded giddy and excited like he'd never heard before, Tim found himself remembering, and not only that, but she'd gone out of her way to call her son, which was maybe the one parent-like thing that Janet had gotten right in her entire life, correctly intuiting that a small boy would be interested in hearing about a camel ride.</p><p>And young Tim had been thrilled to hear about his mom's adventure, but the memory was bittersweet, because little Tim had held the phone tight to his ear as Janet rambled on and he'd wistfully longed to be in Egypt with his parents, getting to ride on a camel, too.</p><p>It had been a long time since Tim had thought about that phone call, actually, because for all the daring adventures he'd had as Robin and then as Red Robin, Tim still hadn't gotten around to riding a camel. Maybe… maybe one day he should.</p><p>He rubbed his nose on his sleeve and caught Babs' eye again when he lifted his head back up. She gave him a soft smile and Tim suddenly wondered if Barbara's answers were going to be equally abrupt as his own. He had a feeling that Babs silently understood and supported him, and if his heart gave a warm cozy sigh, Tim didn't want to hear it, even if he couldn't help but feel the flicker of comfort.</p><p>"Are you ready for the next question?" Bruce asked, though, just to check, and Tim nodded.</p><p>"What favorite dish of your mother's will you be preparing for us today?" Alfred asked with a warm smile for his grandson. "And what memory do you have of your mother eating it?"</p><p>"Caviar," Tim said. "Mom had expensive taste," he shrugged. "I remember her going on and on about the different types of caviar at parties and when someone had some fancy rare kind she wouldn't shut up about it."</p><p>"No fair!" Dick pouted. "That's exactly the same as pouring a bowl of cereal," he said. "All you have to do is open the tin and crackers."</p><p>"Dick," Babs hissed, but Dick put his hands on his hips.</p><p>"Don't shush me," he scolded his wife right back. "I'm making sure that Tim feels like a full-fledged member of the family who gets picked on equally by Alfred's exacting standards."</p><p>Tim didn't want to, but the corner of his mouth tried to smile.</p><p>"I gave Master Timothy a pass on serving caviar since the vegan version he is preparing requires cooking," Alfred said soothingly to Dick.</p><p>"How do you make vegan caviar?" Damian said, frowning.</p><p>"I'm gonna cook some couscous," Tim said, "and mix it up in grape jelly. I figured it would be the same color and texture," he said. "Sort of."</p><p>"Hardly the same flavor palette, though, unless he salts the fuck out of the jelly," Jason mumbled under his breath to Steph, who giggled quietly.</p><p>"Damian will probably like Tim's version better," she whispered back.</p><p>Indeed, Damian was considering Tim's recipe before slowly nodding.</p><p>"Acceptable," he said as he stroked Titus's head.</p><p>"Good," Tim grumbled, but without too much heat.</p><p>"What was your mother's favorite animal?" Damian asked him, apparently deciding to move the proceedings along, which suited Tim just fine. "The camel?" Damian asked.</p><p>"Well, I don't think that was her favorite," Tim said begrudgingly, because he didn't really want to engage in conversation with the Demon-spawn, but since he had to - "Mom was so scared of the camel that I don't think camels were her favorite, even if riding it was a favorite experience of hers."</p><p>"She liked that fancy dog show that's always on TV at Thanksgiving," Tim said. "Not that she ever wanted a dog of our own or anything, but I guess I'd say dogs because she liked to drink mimosas and watch the dog show every year after the Macy's parade," Tim said.</p><p>Damian smiled approvingly and nodded down at Titus in agreement as if the dog had understood Tim's answer, too, and Tim's heart suddenly pinched with how young Damian seemed - how very young, pretending his dog could understand people-talk, and Tim couldn't quite remember ever seeing Damian seem so childlike before.</p><p>Was it because Tim hadn't been around enough to notice anything about Damian, or because he hated him so much that he didn't want to see the boy as anything but a feral assassin?</p><p>Why did that make Tim's heart feel so heavy? The kid had still tried to kill him - not once, but twice, <em>and </em>he'd taken Robin. But in this moment, Damian seemed so small - or maybe Tim was looking at Damian but seeing himself, years younger, longing for a pet dog, and a camel ride, and a mom who stayed home and played with him and hugged him and tucked him in at night.</p><p>Tim tried to swallow down the growing lump in his throat, but it felt stuck.</p><p>"What was the most generous thing your mom ever did?" Dick asked after a long minute of silence, when it became apparent that Jason and Steph were in no rush to ask their questions.</p><p>Tim sighed.</p><p>"Honestly?" he said. "I don't know. Give money to charity, maybe," he said. "Or show up at all the fundraisers and galas when she was actually in town."</p><p>"You can't think of anything more specific?" Jason asked out of the blue, finally raising his head and meeting Tim's surprised eyes. "Something small?" Jason persisted. "Something that impressed you? Even if it was the only truly morally generous thing she did in her life? Maybe towards someone other than you?"</p><p>Tim felt his mouth go dry. He didn't want to sift through memories of his mom and her casually callous disregard of him, looking for one tiny bright gem of humanity. Especially because - -</p><p>- but Jason had shared how Sheila had told him he was a good son and that she didn't deserve him moments before they died, and that made Tim feel like shit for not wanting to dredge up a painful memory of his own mom, who was decidedly less horrible than Sheila, even though that was a fact that only made Tim feel shittier, like his pain wasn't as valid as Jason's, or something.</p><p>And fuck it, Tim <em>did </em>know one generous thing that his mom had done, and he hated it and hated her and hated Jason and even hated Bruce for a brief second, because -</p><p>Tim took a deep breath and wrapped his arms around his unsettled stomach.</p><p>"There was one thing my mom did that was really nice," Tim mumbled to the ground. "And I was surprised by it, because it wasn't something she had to do, like show up to an event."</p><p>Beside Tim, Bruce shifted uncomfortably.</p><p>"What was it, Tim?" Babs asked gently.</p><p>Tim squeezed himself even tighter into his pretzel.</p><p>"When Jason died," Tim said in a thready whisper, eyes locked on a blade of grass.</p><p>Across the way, Jason's sharp inhale almost made Tim look up, but he dug his chin more firmly into his chest while Bruce's grip on his shoulders got tighter.</p><p>"My mom was so sad for Bruce," Tim said hollowly. "And she dragged my dad over to the manor every day for weeks, to keep Bruce company. She even made my dad put off one of their upcoming trips so they could 'support Brucie,'" Tim said with a wry twist of his lips.</p><p>"I don't even know what you guys did," Tim muttered, finally lifting his head to look up at Bruce, who was choking up beside him and wiping his eyes with his free hand.</p><p>"We walked a lot, over the grounds," Bruce said when he could find his voice. "With Alfred, too," he added.</p><p>"Quite so, sir," Alfred murmured with a sniff.</p><p>"Your mom said it would be better for us than sitting still and brooding," Bruce said. "Alfred and I weren't very good company, but your mom and dad would chatter together, about their trips or charities or business highs and lows or upcoming projects."</p><p>"And then we'd come back and eat lunch all together, and in the afternoons, your mom forced me and Alfred to teach her and your dad how to play chess -"</p><p>And here Alfred snorted in a most unbutlerlike fashion.</p><p>"I know," Bruce chuckled. "They were terrible at it. Rank awful. And I think they hated it, but they made us coach them while they suffered through game after game."</p><p>"I didn't know they'd ever played chess," Tim said, looking up at Bruce.</p><p>He nodded.</p><p>"It <em>was</em> very generous," Bruce said. "To see poor Janet, trying to think through the consequences of moving her bishop…" he trailed off and actually laughed a little bit.</p><p>"Not that your father was much better," Alfred said to Tim with a smile. "Never wanted to use his pawns. Always went straight for the queen."</p><p>"Oh," Tim said quietly, withdrawing into himself with that new knowledge; more confirmation that he was the least loved out of all of his parents' acquaintances. His mom had certainly never gone out of her way to learn anything new for Tim, and definitely not anything she despised.</p><p><em>Thanks, Jason,</em> Tim thought bitterly. <em>Thanks for dying and inspiring my mom to be thoughtful for one goddamn time in her life, and thanks for reminding me that it wasn't me she showed up for. Thanks for making me remember it today when I was already feeling like shit. Thank you, thank you, thank you,</em> he snarkily but silently hummed to the tune of Alanis Morisette.</p><p>As far from Tim as they could stand and still be inside the family circle, Steph hugged her arms tighter around Jason's middle. Her fiancé had stiffened as soon as Tim referenced his death, and he was still holding himself as still as a corpse, even after Tim had finished talking.</p><p>"What was the silliest thing your mom ever did?" Steph called out, eager for both a change of subject and a chance for Jason to unclench his jaw before being forced to ask Tim his question.</p><p>Steph gently rubbed soothing circles around Jason's side as Tim had to think (again) before briefly describing his mom learning the Charleston for a Roaring Twenties themed party.</p><p>"You ok?" Steph whispered up to Jason while Tim talked, deciding that Jason was far more deserving of her attention than Tim was.</p><p>Jason let out a slow, beleaguered sigh.</p><p>"I wasn't expecting my death to come up today out of the Replacement's mouth," he mumbled back to Steph under his breath.</p><p>Steph made tiny sympathetic noises into Jason's chest while he wrapped his arms tighter around her and buried his face in her hair, planting tiny kisses on top of her head. Lost in their comforting embrace and tuned out to Tim's narrative, they both jumped when Bruce suddenly joined the hug.</p><p>"Are you ok to go on, Jay?" Bruce said softly into their private huddle. "Or do you need a minute?"</p><p>Jason groaned.</p><p>"Remind me why I thought today was a good idea again?" he muttered.</p><p>Bruce surprised Steph by reaching a hand up to caress Jason's head before kissing his forehead.</p><p>"You didn't want us to stay broken," Bruce said, "and you were hungry for my latkes."</p><p>Jason snorted in quiet amusement.</p><p>"You'd better not fuck them up, old man," Jason said, finally drawing back a little bit to rub his nose. "Did you get applesauce or just sour cream?"</p><p>"Of course I got applesauce," Bruce scoffed.</p><p>"Chunky?" Jason persisted.</p><p>"Yes," Bruce smiled. "I remembered."</p><p>"Hmph," Jason said, but Steph saw a tiny smile on his face when Bruce let him go.</p><p>Tim's eyes were on the trio when they turned back to face him, Steph noted when she finally lifted her eyes up to look at her ex-boyfriend again. Rather than being as angry as they had been earlier, though, Tim's eyes now seemed flat and despondent.</p><p>Steph swallowed. She didn't like that it still bothered her to see Tim sad, after everything he'd done to her. Why did her heart still have to bleed for him when his had apparently frozen solid towards her? But Steph undeniably couldn't stand how many people Tim had lost over the past few years, herself once included on the list. She had abhorred, even while they were dating, how cold Tim's parents had been towards him, and how absent from his life. And most of all, Steph abso-fucking-lutely hated that Conner was dead.</p><p>Steph had been stunned numb with empathetic pain to learn upon her return to Gotham that Superboy had been killed. Conner had been Tim's BFF, even more than Steph had been. Tim and Steph had been fellow vigilantes, sure, but often little more than two shadows passing in the night when they were on the job, since Spoiler operated independent of Batman.</p><p>But Conner? Conner was Tim's Titans teammate - his partner in the field. Like Superman was to Batman, Steph thought to herself, the right hand to Tim's left hand, the kick to Tim's punch, the muscle to Tim's brains, the heart to Tim's logic. How could Tim have lost Conner, too? Steph mourned. It wasn't fair - it wasn't. Beyond his parents, beyond Bruce, there was Steph and then there was Conner, and Steph and Bruce had come back, but how much worse did that make it for Tim that Conner hadn't?</p><p>Steph knew without a shadow of a doubt that Tim never would have stayed broken up with her if Conner had been alive. Conner would have scolded Tim, argued with him, fought it out, advised him to get his head out of his ass, and forced Tim to patch things up. But without his Kryptonian buffer, and feeling abandoned by Dick and angry at Damian and devastated by losing Bruce, Tim had let Steph go and killed their relationship as surely as Superboy-Prime had killed Conner.</p><p>And it hurt, so bad, even now, but Steph also couldn't help but see the reasons behind Tim's choices and she couldn't stop herself from pitying him, especially in this moment, seeing him standing by his mom's gravestone believing himself to be so alone, despite the fact that Alfred had moved next to him and put an arm around his grandson's waist as soon as Bruce had come over to check on Jason.</p><p>As Jason mumbled out his question to Tim about the kindest thing his mother had ever said to him, Steph found herself wishing for Cass. Her friend had been in Hong Kong for so long, taking down traffickers and gangs that wound their way to Gotham, and she planned to stay there indefinitely, but if Cass were here, Cass could help Tim, Steph thought.</p><p>Cassandra Cain-Wayne had an uncanny ability to see to the heart of everyone's feelings, reading the truth their bodies told while their mouths lied, and Tim could use some of that understanding laced with tough love and unconditional support from his big sister. He wouldn't accept it from Steph, that was clear. He didn't want to accept it from Dick and Babs and was only begrudgingly allowing Alfred to comfort him, and even though Tim clung to Bruce like a lifeline, God knows Bruce wasn't the best at being a shoulder to lean on.</p><p>But Cass? Cass would force her way past Tim's defenses and coax him out from his crispy shell. Except Cass wasn't here, Steph silently sighed, and wasn't planning to come home anytime soon. Still, maybe Steph would drop a hint to her best friend about giving her most troubled brother a call.</p><p>It couldn't hurt, right?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.” – LYDIA MILLET (author) (not of fanfic) (unless it's under a pseud XD) but I loved this quote for the chapter title. </p><p>I learned 2021 is YEAR OF THE COW to which I say year of the BATCOW - which means it needs MORE BATCOWVERSE! So, yeah. I'm so happy I got a new chapter out for this one!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading! Comments are much appreciated. </p><p>Don't forget to subscribe if you want to be notified when the next chapter posts... and subscribe to the SERIES if you want to know when new stories in this AU post down the road.</p><p>You can follow me on Tumblr as @River9Noble. Come say hi!</p><p>Oh, uh, I may have also made a Batcow fanblog *snorts* @fyeahbatcow</p></blockquote></div></div>
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